


Don't Wake Me, I'm Not Dreaming

by grumpybell



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Dream Magic AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Minor Monty Green/Nathan Miller, Minor Octavia Blake/Lincoln, Minor Wells Jaha/Raven Reyes, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Dream, Slow Burn, trigger warning: physical abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-01 18:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 56,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15149648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumpybell/pseuds/grumpybell
Summary: He turns his head to the side to look at her, so Clarke mirrors him. They aren't touching, but they're lying close, fingertips nearly brushing. The moment stretches out, spanning centuries in just a few breaths. Anything is possible here.He links his pinky with hers, a point of contact. An anchor.- - -a Bellarke Modern AU in which Clarke has the ability to visit other people’s dreams and Bellamy… is kind of a special case.-Winner of Best Modern Fiction for the Bellarke Fan Work Awards 2018Winner of Best Enemies/Friends to Lovers for the Bellarke Fan Work Awards 2018Winner of Best Slow Burn for the Bellarke Fan Work Awards 2018Winner of Best Fluff Fiction for the Bellarke Fan Work Awards 2018





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey everyone! I just wanted to mention a couple of things before you dive into this fic- it is completely drafted and will be 3 parts, the second and third parts will be up as soon as I finish editing them, so probably 3 to 5 days for part two (maybe a week since it's 20k) and the same for part 3. secondly, I just wanted to add a warning that I've kept Bellamy and Octavia's relationship a bit more directly translated from canon (obviously Octavia isn't a cult leader in this fic) and it's not flattering for Octavia's character, so if you're going to have a problem with that (or if you're triggered by depictions of abuse) I suggest you not proceed. I know Octavia in modern AUs is often more like her season 1 self, but I haven't done that with her here, so just a fair warning. 
> 
> I've been living in this AU too long and I've honestly lost sight of if it's any good at all anymore, but I hope at least some of you enjoy!
> 
> come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://grumpybell.tumblr.com/)

Over the years, Clarke's learned that everyone's dreams feel different; it's in everything from the colors, to the lighting, to the emotional tone, unique to every individual. But even knowing this, it still takes time and practice to work out what dreams belong to which people. Clarke's been accidentally dropping into other people's dreams for as long as she can remember, an invisible intruder on some of their deepest thoughts and feelings. She always feels guilty about it, always wished there was a way she could just turn it off, but it's not something she can control.

Her mother had ferried her from expert to expert throughout her childhood, but they hadn't had an explanation. It's not entirely unheard of, dream jumping, but usually it only happens between siblings or close family members and, on rare occasions, couples. It's not like that for Clarke. She'll drop into anyone's dream who happens to be nearby, an unwilling observer to whatever scene she happens upon; it's exhausting. And Clarke never ever has her own dreams, not even once.

It's an inconvenience to say the least, particularly once she gets to college and has to live in the dorm her freshman year, where she's constantly dropping in on the sex dreams of her fellow classmates. They can't see her (thank _god_ ), but she can see them, and while she has enough control over the dreams that she doesn't have to _watch_ , she can't go far, either.

In all her years of dream jumping, she's discovered there's two types of dreams. The most common are the ones where she's nothing but a spectator, unable to be seen or heard or interacted with in any way. She watches the events of the dreams unfold with a certain distance, almost like she's standing behind a pane of glass. These dreams are her normal.

The second type of dream is when someone is dreaming about _her_. It's rare, but much more interesting for her. In these dreams she's an active participant, able to talk to, touch, and shape the dreams, though her influence is still secondary- the setting, tone, and look of the dream all still belongs to the dreamer. If they're feeling adventurous, Clarke tends to find herself swept up in that feeling; if they're sad, her heart is undeniably heavy. It's a bit like Clarke imagines waking up from sleepwalking may be- she finds herself suddenly in a situation, in the middle of an action, dreamed up by someone else. Sometimes Clarke wonders if this type of dream is almost like having dreams of her own. She tends to enjoy these dreams, but they're few and far between.

After all the years of practice, of being thrust into dream after dream that doesn't belong to her, Clarke knows the rules, even if she doesn't understand why it happens. Two types of dreams, a unique feel for each person, a dream controlled and guided by the dreamer, and Clarke unwillingly forced into the middle of it.

Bellamy Blake is an exception. She first falls into one of his dreams when she's fourteen, and she realizes pretty quickly it's a nightmare. Bellamy's dreams are undeniably _warm_ , even that first dream she lands in, the nightmare. Clarke can't explain it, since there's nothing gentle or soft or even close to comforting about the dream. Something about this dreamscape, about this _person_ , is just warm, even with an atmosphere that threatens to choke Clarke with the emotional turmoil.

That first dream, she finds herself in a hospital room, one that smells overwhelmingly of antiseptic and death. It looks like every other hospital room that Clarke's been in, and considering her mother works at the hospital, that's a lot, except for the fact that it's missing any doors, just four solid walls. She immediately feels uneasy about this, trapped.

There are two people in the room with her, the woman in the hospital bed, and a boy in the chair next to it. His dream, Clarke thinks, but she couldn't say why.

The woman looks terrible, her cheeks gaunt and her eyes vacant, so thin she already resembles a corpse. She was probably incredibly attractive once, with her striking bone structure and long dark hair, the type of woman that turned heads. Clarke creeps closer to get a better look. This isn't like most of the nightmares she falls into, no shadowy figure stalking the dreamer, no guts, no gore. But it feels heavier.

She turns her attention to the suspected dreamer. He's older than her, but only by a couple of years if she had to guess- dark curls, warm copper skin, a smattering of freckles, and deep, stunning eyes that strike her even from this distance. The expression on his face is miserable, his shoulders hunched, like he wants to fold in on himself until he's nothing.

The woman in the bed lifts her hand, painfully slowly, like she's reaching out for him and Clarke watches him stare at the hand, frozen, and his expression shifts to be somewhere between hope and terror. He takes her hand and lets her draw him in, close enough that when her lips move to speak, he absolutely will hear.

“Your fault,” is what she says.

It strikes Clarke in the chest like a physical blow, ripping open a painful wound that she doesn't understand, but still feels as the boy struggles to free his hand. He sits back, face pale and pained and... shameful? And in that moment, Clarke understands what this feeling is, the one that permeates the air and aches in her lungs, not sadness, not even agony, it's self loathing.

She takes an involuntary step toward him, into his sight line, a useless one, because this isn't her dream and she can't touch it in any way; she's only a ghost. Or she should be. But when she takes that step, he lifts his head and meets her eyes.

Clarke wakes up.

* * *

 

 

She finds herself in Bellamy Blake's dreams several more times throughout the years, and he's _always_ an exception. For one, Clarke has always fallen into the dreams of the people in close proximity to her, but as far as Clarke can tell, Bellamy _isn't_. He doesn't live in her neighborhood or go to her high school and she has no idea how she ends up in _his_ dreams of all people. She's also never just an observer in his dreams, which she doesn't understand. Bellamy can see her and speak to her, even though he's not dreaming _about_ her, can't be, since he doesn't know her. It's completely unprecedented, and it always takes Clarke by surprise. Bellamy Blake's dreams do not play by the rules and she finds it both fascinating and irritating that she can't figure out why.

Clarke learns his name during her second visit to his dreams, two years after the first, and this time she finds herself in a museum. It's incredibly detailed, and Clarke spends some time taking in her surroundings, from the rich reds in the oil paintings to the polished marble floor, oddly sharp for a dream. She's used to most people's dreams being fuzzy around the edges, incomplete thoughts that bleed into nothingness. This dream isn't like that. It's well defined.

She doesn't know Bellamy is the dreamer at first. There's a smattering of people in the room, gazing at the paintings, sitting on benches, one pretty girl even bent over a sketch book, and while the tone of the dream has a familiar warmth, she can't quite put her finger on why.

But then, turning in a circle to take in the entire hall, she finds him already looking at her. His jaw is a little sharper, his hair a little messier, and she's too far away to see his freckles, but she knows him immediately. Even if he _weren't_ looking at her, she'd know him. He's been a quiet mystery at the back of her mind for two years, the boy she doesn't know, whose dream she fell into and had been _seen_.

What was a good twenty yards between them suddenly becomes two. It doesn't startle her; Clarke's had years to become accustomed to the changing nature of dreams. There aren't rules here, not like in the real world, there's only the dreamer and what they create. It's hard to surprise Clarke in a dream anymore, but his very existence, the fact that he's looking at her, that still does it.

“I've seen you before,” is the first thing he says to her. It comes out puzzled, rather than accusing. He doesn't remember, not really. Besides, he'd only seen her for just an instant, the moment before she'd woken up.

Clarke shrugs. He has, but she doesn't think he's actually referencing their last encounter. Dreams tend to be removed from reality and one another, their own little world. If he's actually remembering her, then that's something new. But then, everything about him is.

“What's your name?” She hadn't thought she'd get a chance to ask. She's always wanted to know, wanted to figure out where he is and why she's in _his_ dreams, of all people, to discover what makes him special. He may not remember this when he wakes up, but Clarke will. The dreams she visits are as real as any of her other memories.

“Bellamy.”

“Bellamy what?”

“Blake,” he answers, distracted by something over her shoulder, and when she turns to look, the back half of the hall is no longer full of oil paintings, but Greco-Roman sculptures.

She has fallen into the dream of an absolute nerd. Clarke doesn't mind so much; she's certainly had worse. And he's a cute nerd, with those big dark eyes and a jawline that could cut glass.

 

She trails him over to the sculptures, and Clarke is once again impressed with the clarity and detail of this dream. Bellamy stops in front of one of the statues to read the description. Clarke skims it as well, wondering if it's accurate, if the piece is actually out there somewhere in the world, or if he's made it up. Bellamy huffs next to her.

“What?”

“It's just a very glossed over history of this piece,” he grumbles, gesturing at the text. Clarke has to fight a smile. He's annoyed with something provided by his own brain. Honestly, what a nerd.

“Where are you from?” Clarke asks, as she follows his weaving path in and out of the art.

“Queens.”  
It's not what she's expecting. Clarke's in Hartford, she shouldn't have that sort of range. She shouldn't be in his dream unless he's literally sleeping next door. Of course, he shouldn't be able to see her either. What's so different about Bellamy Blake?

He spends the rest of the dream lecturing Clarke on the “correct” history and descriptions of the art, scoffing at their official labels. She slips in questions about him here and there, trying to work him out, but nothing she learns points to why she would be here.

He's eighteen, has a fifteen year old sister, loves to read, and knows an absurd amount about Greek and Roman era history.

And he's still an exception. When Clarke wakes up she can still see the expression on his face when he'd gotten caught up in a story, enraptured, and she still doesn't have any answers at all.

* * *

 

 

Her dreams with Bellamy increase in frequency over the next five years, and by the time she's 22, she's in his dreams at least twice a week, sometimes more. She knows a lot about him now- he barely remembers his dad, who died in a car accident when Bellamy was just four years old. His relationship with his mother was complicated; he never felt like he was good enough for her, no matter how hard he tried, and she passed away from cancer when he was 16. Clarke remembers the woman in the hospital bed with her sunken cheeks and her accusing, “your fault,” and she never mentions it, but she knows.

He and his little sister Octavia had been sent to live with a distant relative of their mom's who neither of them had even met before. Bellamy had spent the following years being the real parent to Octavia, as their guardian hadn't really wanted them. She meant well, Bellamy had said, but she didn't much like children, had never wanted any for herself. And, even for Bellamy, who loves Octavia with his whole heart, it was a struggle to deal with Octavia's strong headed nature.

 

“She gets in trouble a lot,” Bellamy had confessed to Clarke, looking exhausted, even in his dreams. “She's a lot like our mom.”

It hadn't felt like an invasion of privacy at the time. Bellamy isn't like everyone else whose dreams she ends up in. She doesn't know him in the real world, and on more than one occasion she's wondered if he's real at all. Maybe Clarke does have her own dreams. Maybe that's what he is.

But he _is_ real, she knows this, because she'd found him on Facebook right after she'd woken up from that dream in the museum where she'd learned his name. She'd skimmed through the few things that were publicly available on his profile, and even though he'd only had a few photos, it was clearly him. She'd thought about friending him, but talked herself out of it. She knows him, but he doesn't know her, and how would she ever explain that? She'd closed out of his profile and promised herself she wouldn't go back.

When she was eighteen, and she found herself dreaming Bellamy more and more, she'd looked for it again, but it was gone. Clarke thinks that's probably a sign. She's just not meant to know Bellamy Blake in waking hours. He's a dream thing, as much a ghost to her as she is to everyone else.

 

 

She meets Bellamy for the first time at a party at Raven Reyes', nearly eight years to the day she first laid eyes on him. Raven is working on a PHD at Columbia, while Clarke is on her third year of her BFA in Studio Art at NYU, having gotten a late start due to transferring. By all accounts, they never should have met, but they'd shared a love for coffee, and a two timing boyfriend.

Finn had been Raven's boyfriend first, and Clarke had found out about her when she'd fallen into one of Finn's dreams. They'd both dumped Finn, but kept each other. In Clarke's opinion, it was a huge upgrade. Raven is Clarke's best friend in the city, which can feel lonely at times, particularly with Clarke's tendency to hover around the edges of any social scene.

Raven's apartment is in Morningside Heights, close to the university, and Clarke usually visits her, rather than the other way around, because long walks tend to bother Raven's knee, even with her brace. Raven never talks about how she'd sustained the injury, and Clarke knows better than to ask; if she wanted Clarke to know, she would. As close as they are, Raven keeps pieces of herself deep. Clarke can't blame her, she does the same with the dreams.

And anyway, Clarke's not a big fan of having her friends over. She lives in a spacious two bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village, financed by her mother. It makes Clarke self conscious to have her friends see it. She knows her circumstances are different from theirs, that she grew up with a silver spoon in her mouth; it's made her peers look differently at her her whole life. She just wants to minimize that. Raven had grown up in a single parent household with an alcoholic mother who'd eventually died from alcohol poisoning, forcing Raven to move in with a verbally abusive aunt. It's about as different a story from Clarke's as you can get.

Raven likes to throw parties, which isn't something Clarke would have ever guessed about her friend when they first met. Raven says she enjoys hosting because it means she doesn't have to worry about getting home at the end of the night, and because her knee sometimes hurts after a long day.

The night she meets Bellamy, Clarke is wasted. Raven had already offered Clarke the couch for the night, and she's drinking a little heavier than usual. She'd had a fight with her mother that morning; she and Abby don't argue as much as they used to when Clarke was in high school, or when Clarke was waffling between majors, but when they do fight, it's _bad_. She feels like she should be used to it, but Clarke's always desperately wanted to live up to her mother's expectations and she gets defensive when she feels like she's failed. And then, on top of that, she'd gotten back a bad grade on an assignment and bumped into her ex, Lexa, and Lexa's girlfriend Costia, so by the time Clarke hits the alcohol, she's not in the best of moods.

“Monty's new boyfriend is coming tonight,” Raven reminds her, slinging an arm over Clarke's shoulders. “We can't pass out until we've met him. He's bringing his roommate too.”

Monty goes to Columbia with Raven and had just broken up with his girlfriend of two years when Raven had met him and subsequently adopted him into their friend group. He and his ex, Harper, have stayed friends and she sometimes joins their trivia team on Thursday nights.

“I know, I know,” Clarke waves Raven away. It's all Monty's been talking about all week, his new boyfriend; it's not like Clarke was going to forget. She's only a little envious of him. And of Raven, who Clarke is pretty sure has been online flirting with Clarke's childhood friend Wells ever since Clarke introduced the two of them at Christmas last year.

Clarke's mixing her fifth drink in the kitchen when she hears Raven shouting for her to, “come meet Monty's hunky boyfriend!”

But when Clarke turns the corner into the living room, her eyes lock on familiar dark curls and brown eyes, already looking at her just like he always is when she shows up in his dreams, and her drink slips right out of her hand and smashes on the hardwood.

She's dimly aware of Raven, Monty, and the guy who must be Monty's boyfriend all turning at the sound of the glass shattering, but all Clarke can think is that Bellamy is _here_ and it's not in a dream. He meets her eyes, and for one breathless moment, it's just them. But then the complete lack of recognition on his face sets in. He doesn't know her. Of course he doesn't- most people don't remember the majority of their dreams. She doesn't know why she thought he would be special, except that he always has been. It's the drink seeping into her socks that shocks her out of her drunken thoughts.

“Shit!” she drops to her knees as if to clean the mess, though she has nothing with her to do so, and she feels a sharp sting as one of the broken shards dig into her knee, drawing blood.

“Hang on, Clarke, stop.” Raven's at her side then, pulling her back up.

“Sorry,” Clarke mumbles, eyes on the floor, and not on Bellamy- Bellamy who doesn't know her. She's too fucked up for this.

“Monty, can you-?” Raven passes Clarke off to Monty, who tugs her in the direction of the bathroom, his boyfriend trailing them. Clarke follows passively, her mind replaying that look in Bellamy's eyes- the absolute nothing.

“Sorry,” Clarke apologizes again as Monty is wiping the blood off her knee, Clarke perched on the edge of the tub, her legs angled awkwardly so Monty can reach them in the shoebox of a bathroom.

“Raven said it was a bad day,” Monty replies, standing up to rifle in Raven's medicine cabinet and coming up with some Neosporin and a box of bandaids. For a moment, she's confused, her mind taking too long to process what he means and then-

“Oh. Yeah, my mom. And Lexa.”

Monty grimaces. “There,” he finishes placing the bandaid. “All done.”

Clarke gets unsteadily to her feet, and it's only then, coming nearly face to face with the man in the doorway, that she remembers.

“Hi,” she says, awkward. “I'm Clarke.”

He nods at her. “Miller.” He studies her, a knowing gleam in his eye. “And that was Bellamy, my roommate, the one you were staring at.”

“I wasn't,” Clarke protests, but Miller only rolls his eyes at her.

An hour later, Clarke passes out on Raven's couch and she doesn't see Bellamy in her dreams.

* * *

 

 

The thing is, Clarke hasn't told anyone about the dreams. Her mom knows, and Wells knows, and the doctors know, and that's it. She's never told Raven or Monty or even Lexa. It would change things, the fact that she could fall into any one of their dreams and learn things about them they didn't want her to know. She doesn't have choice, she can't choose where to be and she can't make herself wake up. But even so, she's always felt like it's her fault, like people would see it as her purposefully invading their privacy.

Clarke has had a hard enough time making friends, has always been a bit cautious with it, and she doesn't want to give them a reason to put up walls. She hardly finds herself in their dreams anyway. She's been in Raven's dreams four times, and Monty's only twice. She's never gone out of her way to gain more information from people than is forced on her.

Except for Bellamy.

He'd been her exception, always the exception. It had felt okay, because they didn't really know each other, and they never would.

She hadn't just asked him about himself, she'd confided in him too. Bellamy's a good listener, the type of person who seems to take in and weigh every word. She'd spilled her guts to him about the complicated relationship she has with her mother, cried her eyes out on the anniversary of her father's death, and had first turned to Bellamy when she was beginning to question her sexuality. But in the end, it doesn't count, because she knows everything he's ever told her, and he can't even remember who she is. Clarke has no idea what she's supposed to do about it.

 

Bellamy becomes a bit of fixture in her friend group as Monty and Miller's relationship becomes more serious over the next few weeks. He's Miller's best friend, in addition to being his roommate, and he fits into the group well, except that he takes an instant disliking to Clarke.

She isn't prepared for it- the way he mockingly calls her princess, makes subtle jabs about her money and her nice clothes, and rolls his eyes at practically anything she says. It wouldn't hurt so much if he weren't _Bellamy,_ but he is, and for the past few years he's been her person, her safety net, someone she could confide anything to. And those might have been dreams, but he wasn't; he was real.

The worst part might be that she sees _that_ Bellamy, the one that she now sees nearly every night when she closes her eyes, in the way he is with the rest of their friends. With them, he's warm, and teasing, and fiercely protective; it's only her he's cold to. It hurts more than she can explain, like having a knife twisted between her ribs every time he sneers at her.

Clarke knows she doesn't help matters. She just isn't the sort of person who can get pushed and not push back. So even though a huge part of her doesn't _want_ to fight with him, still sees him as that friend she made in her dreams all those years ago, she can't seem to control her tongue. So she takes shots back at him, little barbs about his superiority complex and his inability to admit he's wrong, and more often than not when they're in the same room, she and Bellamy end up fighting. She _hates_ it. Clarke wants nothing more than for it to stop, to get a chance to get to know Bellamy out in the real world the way she knows him in his dreams. But that doesn't seem like a realistic possibility.

She just wishes she understood why he seems to actually _hate_ her. She knows he has a problem with her money. It was something Clarke already knew about Bellamy from his dreams, that money is a sore spot for him. He grew up with very little of it, had to scrape to get by, had to sacrifice for the good of his sister, even as a kid. He resents people who have an overabundance. Clarke can't blame him, but she wishes he could see past it. In his dreams he doesn't hate her for it. And this feels... more personal than that. Miller had grown up with money too, and he's Bellamy's best friend. It's impossibly hard to reconcile real life Bellamy with the Bellamy whose dreams she now spends so many nights in she's come to expect it every time she closes her eyes.

Dream Bellamy is gentle. And he smiles when he sees her. When he's really happy, he dreams them into a library, a great big beast of a library, with high shelves and row after winding row of books. It's warmly lit by strings of hanging electric lights in Edison bulbs and roaring fireplaces tucked away in corners, surrounded by overstuffed armchairs and sofas. The books on the shelves are bursting with fairytales and myths and fantastical versions of history, as well as painstakingly accurate ones, a glance into Bellamy's mind. These dreams are soft and warm and make Clarke feel safe in a way she's never felt in her real life. Nothing bad ever happens in that library.

But perhaps the thing that Clarke cherishes the most about Bellamy's dreams is the freedom he allows her. She didn't know it was possible, has no explanation for it, but when Clarke is sad or stressed or sometimes just because he seems to want to, Bellamy gives the dreams to her to shape. Clarke doesn't understand it. She's always been an observer, whenever she sleeps, trapped in someone else's world, in someone else's head- rarely even able to be seen. But from that first dream, Bellamy saw her. And now he gives her the freedom to create. She's never had her own dreams, but in his, Clarke can conjure up stunning cityscapes for them to fly over, or dark forests to creep through, magic at their fingertips, adventures where they're the heroes, fighting battles side by side, back to back. Bellamy opens his dreams as a canvas for Clarke's imagination. He lets Clarke paint expansive landscapes in his dreams- an ocean of flowers, a field of stars, a universe all her own. It is a gift so precious to her, she doesn't even know how to begin to thank him.

Another oddity is this- dream Bellamy remembers her from his dreams, but not the real world. In his dreams he always recognizes her, remembers all the things they've said and shared and done in past dreams. And if he wonders if she's real or where she comes from or why she's always there, he never asks. He welcomes her with that warm smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes, and they don't need words to understand each other.

But when he's awake, Bellamy never shows any sort of sign that he remembers his dreams. Only Clarke remembers all that has passed between them, for years now. She wants to puzzle out why it's like this, and why he's so special, an exception to every rule she thought she knew, that she thought was set in stone. But in real life, Bellamy doesn't even like her, and Clarke isn't brave enough to approach him about it. He would never believe her anyway, that this girl he dislikes so much spends her nights as his greatest supporter, his partner in crime, his closest confidant.

 

* * *

 

 

 

The first time Clarke sees Bellamy vulnerable in the waking world is when his sister moves back to NYC. She knows all about Octavia from his dreams. And even though this particular dream was years ago, she can't think of Octavia without thinking of the first time Bellamy showed her to Clarke, an image of a little girl with flowers in her hair and luminous, glowing blue butterflies perched in her palm, on her fingertip, on the crown of flowers, and more fluttering all around, lighting her up and making her shine like a girl out of one of Bellamy's fairytales.

The Octavia that Clarke meets is decidedly harsher, with a clenched jaw and edges so sharp you could cut yourself. She's got braids in her hair instead of flowers, a bruise on her left cheekbone, and a leather jacket that looks like it's seen better days. But she smiles bright, and brilliant when she spots her brother, a little bit of genuine warmth sneaking into her expression. Like everything with Bellamy, his relationship with Octavia is complicated.

They're at the bar that Raven had picked out for their new trivia night (now Wednesdays to accommodate Monty's class schedule) after an extensive amount of research that mostly involved her and Clarke spending every weekend at a different bar that hosts trivia and barely avoiding alcohol poisoning. This one, Dropship, had ended up the winner based mostly on the fact that it's close to Raven's apartment, but seedy enough that no one bats an eye when Bellamy and Clarke get in full out yelling matches during the competition. Octavia fits right in at the bar, throwing her motorcycle boots up on the chair across from her, a beer in hand.

 

Clarke already knows what Octavia does for a living- “extreme sport advertisement” as she calls it, which means that she models while doing dangerous things. Her agency has her shipped all over the world, jumping off cliffs and out of planes, deep sea diving, rock climbing, anything that delivers an adrenaline rush. But she isn't supposed to know that, so Clarke tries to look like she's paying attention while Octavia explains it, and instead surreptitiously watches Bellamy out of the corner of her eye. He's smiling faintly, but there's tension in his shoulders; he _hates_ his sister's job.

“-But Lincoln got offered this gallery space in Red Hook, and they told me I have to take some time off while my collarbone is healing,” Octavia rolls her eyes here, as if broken bones shouldn't apply to her, “So here we are. Well, here I am. Lincoln's at some investment meeting with his sponsor, but he'll be here next time.”

Bellamy's told Clarke about Lincoln as well, his sister's significantly older boyfriend, who Bellamy had initially despised. But it turns out, despite sporting enough muscles to grace the cover of a men's health and fitness magazine (which he _had;_ he'd met Octavia through his side career of fitness modeling), Lincoln is by far the more sensible of the two, and seems to be the only one capable of truly reining Octavia in, and that's endeared him to Bellamy over the years.

Clarke's not sure what to think of Octavia in person. She seems to take up more space than someone of her size should. There's no question she has personality in spades. But Clarke can't help but spend too much of her time gauging Bellamy's reaction to everything Octavia says and does. Besides Miller, Clarke might be the only one who knows him well enough to notice the strain around his eyes. There's something off about him, but Clarke knows he wouldn't appreciate anyone drawing attention to it, much less _her_.

She loses track of Bellamy when he goes to play doubles at pool with Monty, Miller, and Harper, but she can still hear his laughter over the din of the bar. The tension seems to have gone out of him in the last half hour, and his laughter has come more freely than Clarke's accustomed to.

The impromptu pool game leaves Clarke alone with Raven and Octavia, and Clarke sits back and lets them dominate the conversation, which has somehow shifted to snowboarding in the Alps, something Clarke isn't particularly keen to do. Her family had gone on ski trips when she was young, and all the money in the world hadn't been able to make her decent at it. Octavia's telling a story about a near miss with an avalanche, gesturing a little wildly now that she's several drinks in.

Raven's hand is wrapped unconsciously around the top edge of her knee brace, and Clarke feels a pang of sadness for her friend; Clarke's never known Raven without it, often forgets it's even there, but she knows based on some of the stories Raven tells, that she used to be really into some of the more extreme sports. Maybe she'll get back to them one day- if anyone can, it's Raven.

Octavia excuses herself half an hour later to join the others at the pool table, and Clarke feels a little bad that she's somewhat relieved to see her go.

“You don't like her?”

Clarke is startled by Raven's voice, and turns to find her friend watching her expression carefully.

“I don't... I don't dislike her. I just...” She doesn't know how to explain that her hesitance to embrace Octavia fully comes from the lines around Bellamy's eyes. Raven wouldn't understand, and that's Clarke's own fault; she's never told her. She wouldn't even know where to begin. The truth of Clarke's dreams and Bellamy's role in them feels like something that started off small, and unimportant, and has spiraled into this secret that's constantly just at the edge of her mind.

“What is it with you and the Blakes?” Raven jokes, elbowing Clarke gently, but it's a good question.

A drink and a half later, Raven wanders off, probably to challenge someone to darts. Somehow, Raven maintains a freakish amount of coordination while intoxicated. Clarke's not so lucky, so she stays in her seat to finish her drink, spying flashes of her friends out of the corner of her eye.

Clarke's not really one for crowds. She's an introvert, and while she likes going out with her friends, she sometimes finds herself overwhelmed. She's often the first who is ready to go home. And because of this, she knows no one will worry if she slips away early.

She stumbles across Bellamy on the sidewalk out back, not expecting him to be there. She never saw him leave the pool table at the back of the bar. She'd just assumed he was still inside with the rest of their friends; Bellamy never seems overwhelmed in group settings the way Clarke is. But he doesn't look like he's doing so hot right this moment.

He's got one of his hands wrapped around the iron railing of the stairs, gripping so tight that his knuckles are visibly white and bloodless, even with only the light of the single streetlamp on the corner.

Bellamy's eyes are closed, and he's breathing deeply through his nose, swaying just slightly on his feet. And Clarke's never seen him like this, not in either world, never seen him fight so hard for composure, but she knows what this look is- it's distress. And she's so unused to anything like it from him in the harsh reality of the waking world that she lays a hand on his arm before she can stop herself. It's an unconscious reaction, one she might not have made if she'd thought about it.

His eyes fly open and fix on her, and in a split second the vulnerability is gone, and in its place is anger, a challenge.

“What do you want?” he spits out, as cold as he's ever been with her. But it doesn't land. It's a shield for him, rather than a weapon wielded against her, and it cannot hurt her. What she wants is to reach up and soften that deep crease between his brows, to fold him into her arms, and conjure up his library around them, where it's warm and safe and nothing bad gets in. But this isn't a dream, and she can't do that. So instead, she removes her hand slowly from his arm and she shoves everything she wants to say to him, that she wants him to understand, back down her throat. And she walks away before it can crawl back up and escape.

 

Clarke thinks about it a lot, that night, and the look in Bellamy's eyes. It haunts her, follows her into his dreams, where he repeatedly asks her why she's looking at him so funny, and teases her for disappearing into her own head. He seems fine there, none of the weight that had seemed to be pressing down on him visible in his dream world. But Clarke can't shake the visual of him behind the bar by himself, barely holding it together.

It's not just that she's never seen him that upset, it's that she has absolutely no idea what had caused it, particularly when he'd been in such a good mood only an hour or so earlier. Bellamy may not consciously think they're friends, but Clarke's been his friend for years, and she hates not knowing what's causing him pain. She's unused to it.

It had changed them, that brief moment outside the bar. Ever since, Bellamy's picked less fights with her. She wishes she thought it was because he's softened toward her, but in reality he just seems to be avoiding any interaction with her altogether.

She lets it be. It's not like her. Clarke is quite frankly terrible at minding her own business, but in this case, she doesn't see that she has another option. Bellamy isn't her friend, at least not in his eyes, and as much as she wants it, he won't open up to her. She shoves away the voice in her head that says that's not entirely true. She could ask him in his dreams. He would likely tell her everything; he always has. But she's been trying so hard not to use his own dreams against his will, not now that she knows him for real. She'd never felt guilty about it before, when they only ever knew each other as dream creatures. It had felt like even footing then. Now it feels like manipulation. Like a betrayal of trust.

But then, three weeks after that night outside the bar, Clarke finds herself on a soft sandy beach, waves crashing against the shore, and Bellamy's warm dream aura all around her. It takes her a few moments to find him. He's in a hammock, slung between two palm trees, face turned to the sun, eyes closed. He would look the perfect picture of serenity if it weren't for the bruises that litter his skin, a black eye, a shallow cut on his cheekbone, ugly purple welts on his arms.

Clarke has never seen him injured in his dreams outside of the occasional scrape or bloody nose, but those are his adventure dreams, the ones where they're gods and goddesses fighting mythical wars. This is something else entirely.

She sits down on the edge of the hammock, making it dip in her direction. Bellamy cracks an eye open ever so slightly and watches her from under his lashes. He grins at her, only wincing slightly as it pulls at his cheek. In his dreams, Bellamy _always_ smiles when he sees her.

“What happened?” She reaches out to trace the edge of the bruise on his cheek, and he closes his eyes. Clarke's breaking a new rule here, she's not supposed to ask him things about himself, not anymore. Bellamy waves her off, though the smile on his lips has turned brittle.

“It's nothing.”

But Clarke can't let that be. She just can't. She'll leave him alone in real life, if that's what he wants, but she can't sit here with him, with pain evident in his skin, and say absolutely nothing.

“Bell...”

“I don't want to talk about it,” he says plainly, and his eyes are still closed, so Clarke can't quite grasp what emotion is behind the words; it feels oddly like shame. She hasn't tasted that emotion in his dream so strongly since the nightmare about his mother, all those years ago.

 

“It's a nice day,” Bellamy continues, opening both his eyes finally and grasping Clarke's wrist gently, tugging her down into the hammock with him. “Relax with me.”

She can never deny him things like this, curled into his side, her head on his chest, the hammock swaying lightly in the breeze. It feels so good to be close to him, particularly with the distance he's put between them when he's awake. It might be wrong, to share this sort of comfortable intimacy with him at night, in a dream, but he asks her, so she caves immediately.

And the sun and the sound of the waves and Bellamy warm against her, his heartbeat under her ear, it's its own kind of dream, the closest Clarke has to dreaming for herself.

 

When she sees Bellamy the next day at Raven's, he doesn't have any visible injuries. They're carving pumpkins for Halloween, something none of them but Clarke is particularly good at (and her only because she's such a perfectionist about it), but that they do every year anyway. Usually this means Raven puts on some Halloween movies, everyone finishes their pumpkins in about half an hour except Clarke, and then consume copious amounts of alcohol. This year is a little different.

Just like in everything else, it turns out Bellamy is competitive about it. This means that by halfway through the first movie, he and Clarke are the only two still sober and working on their pumpkins. They're sprawled on the floor with a layer of old newspaper under them to protect Raven's hardwood, with the rest of their friends puppy piled onto the sofa, well on their way to drunk and yelling at Hocus Pocus. It's one of the first times Clarke's found herself at least vaguely alone with Bellamy. It's almost companionable.

“Bellamy is so Binx in this movie,” Raven jokes. “I mean out of all of us, who would be the first to sacrifice themselves for a random little girl they just met?” Raven's not wrong- that's definitely Bellamy.

“Yeah, not to mention he originally got cursed trying to save his sister,” Monty adds.

Bellamy's smiling at their friends gentle needling, but Clarke knows him well enough to know his mind is elsewhere. She holds her tongue for a few moments, long enough that Monty and Raven get distracted debating the flying vacuum, but then she finds the words slipping out.

“Are you okay?” She keeps her voice low, for Bellamy's ears only.

His shoulders tense up. “Why wouldn't I be?” It's suspicious, bordering on combatant, but he doesn't say yes.

“When you're upset your eyes don't crinkle up at the corners when you smile the way they do when you mean it,” Clarke blurts out before she can stop herself.

Bellamy blinks at her, stunned. She probably shouldn't have said that. It just kills her, sitting there, pretending like she doesn't know him, letting him pretend he's okay when she knows he's not.

“I'm fine,” he manages, finally, his voice a little gruffer than it had been before.

If this were a dream, Clarke might push it, but it's not, and the fact that he didn't immediately snap at her is progress. So instead, she just shrugs and goes back to carefully carving the details of the owl into her pumpkin.

She catches Bellamy watching her a couple of times throughout the evening, a curious look on his face, but it's so much better than the hostility or the avoidance. Clarke will take what she can get. The problem is, and it's something Clarke can only admit to herself when she's a few drinks in like she is tonight, she may have fallen a little bit in love with him from his dreams. She banishes the thought as soon as it crosses her mind, it's not something she can afford. It hurts too much.

* * *

 

 

On the anniversary of Bellamy's mother's death, he gets tremendously drunk. Clarke probably wouldn't have known about it at all, but it happens to fall on a weekend where Monty and Miller are taking their first couples vacation, Octavia and Lincoln are off doing some modeling that Octavia was cleared for even with her healing collarbone on the condition that she keeps her feet firmly planted on the ground, and Raven's gone into one of her modes where she's on some new genius idea and locks everyone out of her apartment and doesn't answer her phone or reappear for several days.

In the week since the pumpkin carving, Bellamy had slipped back into antagonizing her, and Clarke's not sure why she thought it would be different. She tries not to let it hurt too much. She yells back, takes shots at him, she should be a better person than that. It just seems so unfair how deeply he can hurt her and not even know it. The rest of their friends see it, sigh and roll their eyes, and beg them to get along. Clarke tries, she _does,_ it's just hard. So she knows, when her phone rings at two in the morning and it's Miller on the other end asking her if she can pick Bellamy up, that she's not the first person he would have called. He just didn't have another choice.

Apparently Bellamy's drunk texting Miller from the bar, which is never a good sign. Bellamy doesn't particularly like texting sober, if he's doing it drunk, he's probably pretty upset.

“Look, I'm sorry, but there really isn't anyone else, can you please pick him up? I know he doesn't have to drive, but he's not in a position to navigate the subway right now.” It's probably the most earnest thing she's ever heard Miller say. He really does care about Bellamy. And he's called the right person, even if he doesn't know it; Bellamy might be rude to Clarke, might hurt her feelings on a daily basis, but he's still Bellamy, still the person her allows her the freedom to build her own dreams inside of his, who listens so carefully to everything she tells him, who had held her every time she'd broken down over her dad's death. No one but Clarke knows he's that person, but he is, and she still adores him.

Bellamy's at their usual bar in Raven's neighborhood, which is better than having to go all the way to Queens to get him, but still not convenient. Clarke drives, mostly because she's afraid that Bellamy might pass out on her, and she's nowhere near strong enough to handle his body weight on the subway or the walk home. Driving seems like the safest option, even though traffic is terrible and finding parking is a bitch.

She finds him literally slumped over the bar, forehead resting on the smooth wood. The bartender is eying him like he's afraid Bellamy is going to become his problem. His face shows palpable relief when Clarke bee lines straight for Bellamy and puts a hand on his shoulder. Luckily, he's conscious, because he lifts his head slowly at her touch.

He looks at her with confused eyes when he sees that it's her, but the usual animosity isn't there. His gaze on her is softer than she's used to in the waking world. He looks like his dream self in that moment.

“Come on, Bell,” Clarke says, urging him off his barstool. “It's time to go.”

He's surprisingly compliant; she's gotten used to the amount of fight real life Bellamy has, but he trails her out to her car without complaint and manages to buckle his own seatbelt, despite the sway in his step.

“Miller asked me to take you to my apartment. He says you have a bad habit of ending up bleeding when you drink this much,” Clarke informs him, waiting for the anger, waiting for the storm in Bellamy's chest to roar up his throat and come for her.

But he only sighs deeply. “Miller worries too much.”

It's quiet in Clarke's car for a few minutes, and part of her doesn't want to risk this tentative peace between them, but another part of her is dying for an answer and she thinks it's possible this Bellamy might give it to her. It doesn't help that the traffic is slow going, leaving them too much room for silence.

“Why do you hate me?” she asks.

Bellamy turns his head to look at her, and even with her eyes on the road she can feel the weight of his gaze. “I don't hate you,” he says, finally. His voice is void of everything but exhaustion.

“Okay, fine, why are you so mean to me?”

Bellamy doesn't say anything for a long time. “It was the money.” He pauses. “But then it was... the way you look at me- it's like you know me, like I'm just... see through, and you know everything. You _don't_. I haven't told you shit. Who gave you the right to look at me like you _know_ \- You don't know... But sometimes it feels like you do.”

His words are like a blow to the chest, because even though he didn't pose it as a question, she knows the answer. She looks at him like she knows him because she _does._ It's because he's spent hours telling her about his mom, about the accident that killed his dad, about trying to take care of Octavia and the burn on his arm from his first attempt at using the stove when his mom was too sick to get out of bed. She knows about the year he spent sneaking his free lunch from school home to his sister for dinner, and how he went hungry, gaunt cheeked and wild eyed. He hadn't just told her, he'd shown her, walked her through dark memories of his mom passed out on their couch with a needle still in her arm, and through bright ones, him carefully braiding together flowers in the park to crown his sister with. She looks at him like that because she does know him, inside and out. But he doesn't know that. And she has no idea how to tell him, or if she even should.

It's a long slow drive back to Clarke's apartment. Bellamy dozes in the passenger seat, head tilted against the window. Luckily he rouses pretty easily after Clarke has parked and only leans on her a little on the way up to her building and into the elevator.

Clarke's actually glad Bellamy's drunk the first time he sees her apartment. It's too spacious to be anything but ridiculously expensive, and she knows Bellamy knows that, but he doesn't say anything as she nudges him in the direction of her second bedroom. She figures he can find his own way to the bed, while she stops to fill up a glass of water and grab a couple of ibuprofen to leave on the nightstand. Bellamy's collapsed face down onto the bed, not even bothering to pull back the covers or take off his shoes. Clarke leaves water and painkillers for him to find, pens a quick note to tell him where he is when he wakes up, and tugs off his shoes before she goes, closing the door behind her.

It's well after four in the morning at this point, and Clarke's first priority is to get back to her own bed. She doesn't consider much more than that; she doesn't think about what Bellamy might be dreaming. She should have.

That night is the first time she falls into one of Bellamy's dreams and he's dreaming _about_ her. It's a shock for multiple reasons. He's never dreamed about her before. But more pressing, is the fact that when she falls into the dream, Bellamy's in the middle of going down on her. She's already on the brink of an orgasm before she can process what's happening, Bellamy's arm banded across her hips, holding her steady, while he sinks two fingers deep into her and curls them at just the right angle so she can hardly breathe. He's singularly focused, tongue on her clit, fingers buried in her cunt, not letting up even as Clarke winds her fingers into his hair and nearly sobs from the intensity of it. It's overwhelming, the sudden heat licking into her veins, making her see white. It does not cross her mind to put a stop to it. Not until after she comes so hard she can feel her heartbeat in her ears, and Bellamy's nosing gently at her hip as she comes down.

 

It's only then that the reality, or complete lack of reality, sets in. This is a dream. Bellamy's dream. And even though he's dreaming about _her_ , she's still an intruder. He has no idea this is something she's actually experiencing with him, something she'll remember in the morning (as if she's ever going to forget _that_ ), and so she can't let it continue.

All of this is running somewhat sluggishly through her head as he's kissing his way lazily back up her body, and by the time he gets to her neck, teeth grazing her pulse point, Clarke's deep in an internal struggle. She'd like nothing more than to give into this, into him, but it's wrong.

“Bell?” Her voice is breathless, shaky.

“Mhm?”

“Is it...” She has to force the words out against her own protesting mind. “Would it be okay if we just lie here?”

He props himself up on an elbow to look at her, and it's hard to meet his eyes. Even in his dreams Bellamy doesn't look at her like this, soft, with something like adoration.

“Anything you want, Princess.”

He lies back down, arm curling over her waist and pulling her close. It's then that she becomes aware that they're both very naked, Bellamy's erection pressed against her upper thigh.

“Sorry,” he apologizes in a low voice. “It's gonna take the rest of me a minute to get the memo.”

And fuck, Clarke loves him. Nothing good can come of this, but her heart beats faster anyway. And she doesn't say anything at all, as she lies in his arms and revels in the feel of his warm skin against hers.

“I should make you breakfast,” Bellamy mumbles sleepily, some time later, and sure enough there are rays of light creeping in from the edges of his curtains.

“You don't have to,” Clarke argues, not wanting to lose his body heat, but as soon as she says it, she discovers how hungry she is. That's the dream, she knows, being shaped by Bellamy, by his thoughts and feelings and desire.

He rolls out of bed and tugs on a pair of sweatpants. Clarke follows him. She's wearing a big t-shirt that she never put on, a reminder of the situation. This isn't real. It doesn't count.

But it feels real, the way he smiles at her when he catches her watching him at the stove, Clarke perched on the countertop. It feels so real that it makes Clarke want to cry.

And somewhere, sometime, everything goes fuzzy at the edges and Clarke slips out of the dream, or maybe Bellamy does, and into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

 

When Clarke wakes up in the morning, she feels hungover, despite not having had a drink in two days. Her head hurts, and her heart beats erratically when her mind clears enough to remember the dream, Bellamy's dream.

She isn't even sure how much of it he meant- he wants to fuck her, of that she's pretty sure, but it was her who took the dream and slowed it down and made it domestic. He didn't do that. But he didn't fight it. There's no point dwelling on it, Clarke tells herself as she crawls out of bed and gets dressed.

It's just past nine and the door to the guest room is still closed. Clarke doesn't expect to see Bellamy for another hour or two at least. She knows he's usually a morning person, something she'd discovered because often his dreams crumble around her as he slips away, long before Clarke wakes up. But he'd had a rough night and a _lot_ of alcohol to sleep off. It's hardly surprising that she's up first.

Clarke doesn't like to cook much, but she's mastered a few recipes over the years, and pancakes is one of them. She adds banana and walnuts to the batter because she knows that's how Bellamy likes them, and then feels stupid for doing so. Last night didn't change anything, not his drunken confession or the dream. He probably won't remember either of those things. But... he might.

Some people's dreams are more practical than others, and the reach of people's imagination never ceases to surprise Clarke. In high school, she'd once fallen into a dream where the U.S. border patrol consisted of Will Smith and his talking attack kangaroo. Not two weeks ago, one of her neighbors had a dream that was solely a one man band, marching through a psychedelic kaleidoscope of colors. She's been in musical dreams where everyone sings, and adventure dreams, hiking through rainforests with spiders the size of dogs. She's watched dreamers as spies, rockstars, and chefs. She's been to carnivals where you can win puppies as prizes. She's found herself in disjointed slasher films, on the edges of cliffs, and breathing underwater. But she's also watched dreams of people “waking up” to their alarms and playing out their work or school day. She's sat through tests and meeting and presentations. She's followed dreamers through hallways with patterned floor tiles that they obsessively count, and lined with doors that never open. She's been in dreams where the dreamer is driving a car without brakes, or their teeth are falling out, or they're being chased by snakes. And in every single one of those, she's nothing more than a phantom. She can't interact.

But every now and then someone will dream _about_ Clarke. When she falls asleep, instead of coming to in a dream where she's a phantom, she finds herself in the middle of an action, playing video games with Raven, sneaking alcohol from his father's liquor cabinet with Wells, laughing with her parents over breakfast before her dad died. It's always startling to her when it happens, like a sleepwalker waking up in a situation she doesn't know anything about. But it's always been a good surprise. When Clarke is a subject of a dream, she ceases to be a ghost. Suddenly she's there, and they can see her, and know her, and it's almost like having her own dreams, she imagines. In Clarke's experience, the dreams her friends and family have remembered are the ones she's actively in. But she doesn't want to think too much about that. Bellamy's always been an exception to everything she knows about dreaming, why shouldn't he be in this too?

So no matter how hard she tries not to think about it as she slides pancakes off her electric skillet and onto a plate, that makes Bellamy's dream last night a problem. How is she supposed to look him in the eyes after what he dreamed last night? And knowing where it would have gone if she hadn't changed it? Clarke's cheeks heat up just thinking about it.

Bellamy shuffles into the kitchen just after 10:45, shoulders hunched and hair an absolute riot. It quickly crosses Clarke's mind how she'd curled her fingers into it last night, but _no_ , she hadn't really, and she suddenly remembers how and why he'd ended up here in the first place- the anniversary of his mother's death. Frequently, Clarke's spent that night with him in his dreams, just... not like last night.

Without a word, Clarke slides Bellamy a plate of pancakes across the kitchen bar, unsure what to say to him. He mumbles a thanks, and then, as if it takes a great deal of effort, he meets her eyes.

He remembers it. It's in his eyes, a flash of last night, and the tips of his ears go red as he looks hurriedly back to his pancakes. It's so surprising to see Bellamy genuinely embarrassed about something that Clarke almost forgets _what_ he's thinking about.

“Do you want some water?” she asks him, when she regains her composure. “Or there's...” she opens her fridge, immediately reminded that she'd meant to go to the grocery store on Thursday, but ended up taking a three hour nap instead, “Beer.”

Bellamy snorts into his pancakes. “Water's good, thanks.”

Clarke scrambles for the glass of water, thankful for something to do with her hands, a reason not to look at him, and not to think about his mouth on her.

“These are really good,” Bellamy says, gesturing at the pancakes with his fork. She can see that this is difficult for him too. They aren't used to being alone or civil with each other. “My favorite, actually.” There's a questioning quality to his voice that makes Clarke panic. She shouldn't have known that, it's something he'd told her years ago in a dream. But she'd made them without thinking, because she knows he likes them.

“Yeah, Octavia said something about that,” Clarke lies, hoping he doesn't think too much on it. He shrugs, and that seems to put an end to it. After all, he's hardly going to guess the truth.

The silence that falls between them is heavy and awkward. It stretches until Bellamy finishes the pile of pancakes and clears his throat, gazing blankly at his plate.

“I- sorry about last night,” he says, finally. “It wasn't a good...” He trails off and leaves the sentence hanging. Clarke knows exactly what last night was, would have even if Miller hadn't told her over the phone, but since he had it seems like safe information to acknowledge. The bigger issue is that she's worried bringing up Bellamy's mother will end the slight peace they seem to have formed.

“Bellamy, I-” He looks up, then, and pins her there with tired, vulnerable eyes. She doesn't want to say the wrong thing.

“My dad died,” is what comes out. Dream Bellamy knows this already, but she doesn't think this Bellamy does. “Ten years ago. And I... I hate it when people tell me they're sorry, like they have any idea what... Anyway, it's not the same, but...”

Bellamy nods, and there's just the barest hint of that softness she'd seen last night.

“Thanks,” he tells her. She's heard that word from his lips more times in the past half hour than the entire time she's known him. Clarke doesn't know where to go from here, but she's spared figuring it out by her phone ringing on the coffee table in the living room.

She hurries to answer it, relieved to get way from the depth of Bellamy's eyes, even if it's just to step around the kitchen bar and scoop up her phone. It's her mother, and Clarke hesitates just an instant before she answers. She's told Bellamy all about her relationship with her mother in his dreams, but as far as she knows the Bellamy that's sitting there in her kitchen only a few feet away has no idea about any of that.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Clarke, good, you're up.” Her mother sounds tired. That's not uncommon; Clarke doesn't know many people who work as hard as her mother. She sometimes wonders how much is just her mother's natural drive and how much is a fear of slowing down and getting buried under it all.

“I know I was supposed to come into the city next week for lunch, but Sydney dropped out of the medical conference in Cleveland and they've asked me to fill in.”

“It's okay, Mom.” Clarke learned a long time ago that any plans with her mother are subject to change.

“I'm going to be there for your birthday,” Abby says, apologetic. “I told Jaha it's nonnegotiable.”

“Really, it's okay.” Clarke loves her mother, but since she moved to the city, she's found other support systems to fill in the gaps. It was hard enough to make time for each other when they lived under the same roof. Clarke has no illusions that it wouldn't be even harder now that they live in entirely different cities.

“I love you, Sweetheart, and I'll call you when I get back from Cleveland, okay? We'll work out dinner or something. Maybe I can get us tickets to a show.”

“Sounds great, I love you too. Bye, Mom.”

When Clarke turns around, Bellamy's exactly where she left him, staring at his empty plate, pretending he hadn't been listening. He looks up when she walks back around the bar and into the kitchen, still a much more subdued version of himself than she's used to.

“I should get going,” he says, a self conscious hand rubbing at the back of his neck.

Clarke doesn't protest. It's hard to look him in the eyes after last night. It's hard to reconcile the weeks of harsh words with the current softness of his eyes. So she ushers him out, makes sure he has his metrocard and his phone, and is ready to close the door behind him when he turns around.

“Clarke, I-” She's never heard Bellamy so hesitant. “About last night,”

And for one terrible moment she thinks he's talking about the dream.

“I meant what I said.” He shrugs, looking vaguely lost. “I just... thought you should know.”

And then he's gone, but even without him sitting quietly in her kitchen with tousled curls and the rasp of his voice after a long night, the dream lingers.

 

Raven surfaces that night for the first time in a week and half, and Clarke's immensely grateful for her friend's impeccable timing. She's spent most of the day trying, and failing, not to think about Bellamy, his whispered confessions, and his arm banded across her hips. It's at times like these that Clarke desperately wishes she had more separation between dreams and reality- it all feels just the same to her. And while she _knows_ it's not, that _yes_ , Bellamy had confessed to her why he's been mean, but _no_ he didn't actually pin her hips down and eat her out, or cuddle with her and make her breakfast, those memories are just as strong.

But Raven, fresh off one of her mad scientist stints, is ready for copious amounts of alcohol and a night of crushing Clarke at Mario Kart, and that's about the best distraction Clarke is going to get.

“Don't you dare use that strawberry mix in this batch!” Raven yells from the living room, while Clarke's working on their third round of frozen margaritas in the kitchen.

“It wasn't that bad!” Clarke calls back. That's not true. The strawberry mix Monty had picked up at the Rite Aid a week before is absolutely foul. Clarke's not convinced there's anything strawberry about it.

“I'm serious, Clarke! That shit needs to go!” It's not like Raven's wrong. Clarke downs a shot of tequila as she works- anything to get drunk a little faster, even if she's generally not a fan of shots. Raven thoroughly trounces Clarke in every game, most of which has to do with Clarke's serious lack of video game skills, but some of which she insists has to do with the four additional shots in her system.

“Keep telling yourself that,” had been Raven's only response, a flip of her ponytail, and a smug sip of her own drink.

She puts off telling Raven about Bellamy until she's definitively tipsy. And even then, the only part she can admit to is what he'd said to her in the car.

“That's bullshit,” Raven slurs. “It's not your fault he's intimidated by you or some shit.”

Clarke wishes she could agree with her. It's true, it's not Clarke's _fault_. She can't control it. But she knows exactly why she's unsettling to Bellamy, even though neither he or Raven do. She can't bring herself to blame him for it. Not when she's invading his dreams.

“At least I know, now.” It had been driving her slowly mad, trying to understand Bellamy's instant disliking of her, when they got along so well in his dreams.

Raven huffs. “At least you can call it out as bullshit next time he tries it.”

Clarke grins. “I'll drink to that.” But what she's thinking is that maybe she's foolish for hoping there won't be a next time, that last night had changed something.

 

Clarke crashes on Raven's sofa somewhere around two thirty in the morning, and wakes up unbearably thirsty. She isn't sure what time it is, but based on the sheer blackness outside the windows, still very late, or rather, unpleasantly early. Clarke stumbles across the living room and into the kitchen, chugs two glasses of water, and tries to ignore the slight spinning of the room.

She passes Raven's room on the way back, and notices the light is on, door cracked, and Raven is speaking softly on the other side. She shouldn't stop to listen, somewhere deep in her, Clarke knows this, but Clarke has a habit of making bad decisions when there's alcohol involved.

“-figure it out,” Raven is saying. There's a long pause. Then-

“I know. But you're forgetting you have a genius on your side.” There's something in her voice, a teasing gentleness that Clarke's never once heard from her friend. Raven doesn't do soft. Clarke's seen her emotional. Even with all Raven's strength and bravado, she's been known to show an emotional underbelly, but it's generally something raw and turbulent, never just soft.

“You're still coming for Clarke's birthday, right?”

It slides into place then. Wells. She's talking to Wells. Raven had denied up and down that anything was going on between them, the last time Clarke had asked, but she'd never believed her. Smiling, Clarke creeps back to the sofa. They'd be good for each other, maybe they've already figured that out. Still woozy from the alcohol, it doesn't take Clarke long to drift off, and it's mercifully one of those rare nights that is entirely dreamless.

* * *

 

 

She runs into Finn Collins for the first time since their breakup a week and half after what she's dubbed “The Bellamy Incident.” It's something she was hoping would never happen, and in a city of 8.5 million, hadn't seemed like such a far fetched dream. Unfortunately, Finn lives in Raven's neighborhood, so it's not as shocking to see him at their usual bar as it could be. It's honestly probably lucky this hasn't happened before. That doesn't make it any better.

She's supposed to be meeting up with the whole group to celebrate Lincoln's gallery show opening up in Red Hook. Unfortunately for Clarke, she's the first to arrive, so she stops at the bar for drink. She has a feeling she's going to need it. It'll be the first time she's really spending any time with Bellamy since that night she'd picked him up from this very bar. He's been busy; Miller had muttered something about Bellamy's thesis when Harper had asked why he wasn't at trivia last week, and Clarke doesn't think he's actively avoiding her, but she can't be sure. She's still lost to this train of thought when someone puts their hand on her elbow and says her name.

It's Finn. He smiles at her, something genuine and pleased, and Clarke just feels sick to her stomach. The last time she'd seen him, she'd shoved all his things into her hallway, Finn trying to “explain” the whole time. He told her he loved her. He hadn't said that until after she'd found out about Raven. All this rushes back at the sight of his face. And he doesn't even look apologetic or uncomfortable. He's _smiling._

Clarke _hates_ that he makes her feel like this, the panic in her throat and the tears threatening at the corners of her eyes. And it's not because she's sad, or she misses him, it's because he makes her furious. It's because she's still angry and wounded and he looks at her like maybe she'll still come around and forgive him. She hates him. But he doesn't even deserve that emotion from her, and she can't stand that he gets it anyway.

Clarke sets her drink down on the bar so he won't see her hands shake- won't go all wide eyed and worried like he has the right to care. She can't believe he even has the guts to approach her after everything.

“There you are,” Bellamy's voice is a deep rumble next to her, and the sense of relief that washes over her is almost as startling as the way he slings an arm over her shoulders, casual, comfortable, and totally _not_ how they are together.

“Hey,” Clarke looks up at him and sees the uncertainty in his eyes, unsure if he's made the right move, so Clarke leans slightly into his side and curls her fingers into his shirt, drawing strength from him next to her. It's a shock, that it's Bellamy who's come to her rescue but... It shouldn't be, should it? Even with someone he doesn't like very much, if you're part of his friend group, Bellamy's a loyal bastard. He might have his issues with her, but Bellamy isn't the sort of person to stand by and watch anyone he knows in distress- apparently her feelings about Finn had been clear enough for him to think she needed an out.

For a moment, she gets lost in the warm brown of Bellamy's eyes, before Finn clears his throat, pulling their attention away from each other. He holds out a hand, a smile on his face that looks just slightly strained to Clarke.

“Hey, I'm Finn,” he introduces himself.

“Bellamy.” Clarke doesn't know if Bellamy knows about Finn- or outside of his dreams, anyway. She hasn't told him, but Raven might've. It would explain the edge of true hostility in his voice. But that might just be how Bellamy is with new people. It was how he was with Clarke. It's only in this moment that she realizes she hasn't heard it recently- not in weeks, not even when they argued.

“So you two are-”  
“-Late to meet up with O and Lincoln,” Bellamy finishes Finn's sentence, dodging the oncoming question. It's a lie, too. They're supposed to all be meeting up here, but it comes out smooth. “Sorry, Princess, we gotta get out of here.” The nickname rolls off his tongue in a way that she's only ever heard late at night in her dreams, teasing, affectionate, fond. The grimace on Finn's face is proof that he hears all that too.

“Bye,” Clarke says, grinning, because it's the one word she's said to Finn since he put his hand on her elbow and it's so perfectly fitting.

Bellamy keeps his arm around her until they're out of the bar, lingers a moment longer than is strictly necessary. Clarke doesn't mind.

“An ex?” Bellamy asks, voice a lot steadier than Clarke feels.

“Yeah. Both mine and Raven's.” His eyebrows go up at that. “We didn't know about each other,” Clarke clarifies. “It's how we met.”

“Shit, wish I'd known that. I would have been more of an asshole.”

Clarke laughs. “You're pretty good at that, yeah.” She doesn't realize what she's saying until it's out of her mouth. She's talking to him like she would in his dreams, teasing barbs, not meant to wound. But this isn't her Bellamy, and that was probably a mistake. She waits for the retort, suddenly filled with anxiety, shoulders tight, but he only huffs and rolls his eyes.

“I might've deserved that.”

It's so unexpected, exactly how Bellamy might respond to Miller or Raven or Harper, that Clarke just kind of blinks at him in surprise.

He looks back, steady, warm. It feels good, so good, to have him look at her like this, like she's his friend. It's more than she'd hoped for. Clarke's aware, dimly, that they're both standing here, staring into each other's eyes, and someone should probably say something, but it's like her mind is moving too slowly. She sways toward him, just slightly, a compulsion to touch, to confirm that he is indeed, right there in front of her, real. It startles her enough that she takes a deliberate step back, and breaks eye contact with him.

“You should probably send a group text,” Bellamy says, casual, like nothing had happened. “Let everyone know there's been a change of plans.

He's right. She should. She definitely should keep Raven away from that bar. It also gives her an excuse to look at her phone, and not at Bellamy, this strange, wonderful version of him. She has to look away, or she's afraid she'll look at him too fondly, look at him in the way that makes him feel stripped and bare and had been the cause of all his hostility to begin with.

 

They end up at a bar three blocks over. It's a little grungier than their normal haunt; it definitely falls into the category of “dive bar,” but the drinks are good, and it turns out the bartender, Murphy, went to high school with Bellamy and he makes their drinks stronger than what they're paying for. By the time the entirety of their group arrives, Clarke's a little tipsy, and she doesn't think Bellamy is far behind her.

“So why are we here?” Octavia asks, even though she seems perfectly comfortable tilting back slightly in her chair.

“Our ex was at Dropship,” Raven answers, swirling the little plastic pitchfork that had come in her drink in circles.

“He was dating us both without either of us knowing,” Clarke explains again, slightly taken aback by how Octavia gets the exact same expression on her face that Bellamy had at the news. “It's how we ended up friends.”

“Asshole,” Miller mutters into his beer.

“If you want to put it nicely,” Raven responds. “God, I need another drink.”

“Shots?” Octavia asks, bringing the front legs of her chair down with a snap. “I'm buying.” She turns to smile at Lincoln, and Clarke's never seen someone's face change so fast. Most of the time, Octavia's got an expression that Clarke can only describe as fierce, but all that melts away when she looks at her boyfriend, a genuine softness gentling the sharp angles of her face.

“After all, it's not everyday my boyfriend opens his own gallery show.”

“Technically that's tomorrow,” Lincoln says, the calm to Octavia's storm.

“Yes, but I'm told it's generally frowned upon to get smashed at those sorts of events. So _tonight_ , shots.” Octavia doesn't wait for a response, darting off to the bar, and leaning over it to grab Murphy's attention. Clarke suspects it's not too easy to actually _get_ Lincoln smashed; he's been attending some of their group outings for nearly two months now and Clarke's never seen it.

As usual, the group breaks apart into pieces throughout the night, and Clarke loses track of everyone but Raven within a couple of hours. They're sprawled together on an incredibly questionable couch near the back of the bar by the pool table. Raven would never say, but Clarke suspects her knee is hurting her, or she'd be kicking Monty's ass at pool right about now.

For her part, Clarke's not much for bar games, or any games really, she has little talent for them and a competitive streak a mile wide. It doesn't make for a good combination so she tends to stay away. She hasn't been drinking much in the last hour, and she feels mostly clear headed, just... relaxed, and worry free, which is precisely how she wants to feel. She can't remember what was so bad about seeing Finn earlier. She _can_ remember how nice Bellamy's arm had felt around her.

“Ah, fuck.” Clarke turns her head slowly at the expletive, unable to feel too bothered by anything. Everything feels soft around the edges. Raven's spilled some of her drink down the front of her shirt. Clearly she's in worse shape than Clarke. It occurs to Clarke, rather slowly, that maybe she should help.

“Do you want me to get you some paper towels from the bathroom?” she offers.

“If you want to.” Raven's frowning down at her shirt. Even drunk, she's not good at accepting help, but Clarke's used to that. She'll appreciate it, even if she can't admit it.

The hallway back to the bathrooms is both longer and narrower than Clarke was expecting. It's wallpapered with flyers, stickers, and scribbled graffiti. She wonders if that's actually Jessica's phone number written in large block letters, or if it's something made up, a pizza place, or a rejection hotline. Remembering she's supposed to be getting paper towels for Raven, Clarke turns away from the wall and nearly collides with Bellamy as he steps out of the men's bathroom.

He catches her with a steady hand. “Sorry.”

“It's fine, I was just- Raven spilled her drink and...” His hand is still on her arm, fingers pressed gently against her skin, and Clarke is hyper aware of his close proximity. He's looking at her again, that warmth in his eyes. But no, it's not just warmth this time, it's heat. That look is intoxicating, like its own kind of alcohol settling into Clarke's belly, something heavy and heady and burning.

Bellamy takes a step toward her, and Clarke's back is against the wall, Jessica's phone number somewhere above her head, and her heart is thundering in her chest. Some part of her, deep inside, buried under the calming lick of alcohol in her veins, wonders if this is already a mistake, just one more thing to separate them in the real world, in the daylight. But when Bellamy leans in, his breath warm on her cheek, she can't bring herself to care.

His lips ghost her jawline, a touch that's just barely there. It's not really a kiss, more breath than lips, and it makes Clarke shiver, her body tingling with it.

“I just can't stop thinking about this dream,” Bellamy murmurs against the shell of her ear. Clarke inhales sharply, involuntarily, because she knows _exactly_ what dream he means. She hasn't been able to stop thinking about it either. But he wouldn't know that. Bellamy kisses her neck, just once, a burning, openmouthed kiss, that ends with the sting of teeth, and then he's dropping slowly to his knees, hands hot on her thighs.

 

He pauses there, looking up at her, fingers curled on the backs of her legs, just above her knees. She knows he's waiting for permission, and she can think of a million reasons not to give it to him. They're practically in public; they've both been drinking; they'll probably regret it in the morning; they aren't even really friends, have only just established a rocky peace between them; he doesn't know about the dreams. But even as all this flits through her head, she's remembering the way it had felt before, so achingly good she could do nothing but sink into it, unbearable and pure ecstasy all at once. She should say no, but instead she meets his eyes and threads her fingers into his hair.

“You have to stay quiet,” Bellamy murmurs into her thigh.

It feels less real than the dream. It feels impossible that he's pushing her skirt up her legs, his touch now scorching, a brand. Clarke feels like she's somewhere outside of herself, her body thrumming with tension and energy, apprehension and excitement eating its way through her chest. He pulls her underwear to the side, doesn't try to remove it. And then, with no preamble, he puts his mouth on her.

 

It's hot and fast, messy; they don't have time to linger. Bellamy's got one finger inside her, then two, tongue going to work on her clit immediately. He chases her orgasm with a determination and focus that leaves Clarke so weak in the knees she's grateful for the wall to her back. Somehow, one of her legs had found its way over his shoulder, one hand in his hair, the other braced against the wall, a desperate attempt to keep herself upright, while her heart threatens to burst. It's all she can do to keep her mouth shut, jaw clenched tightly to keep quiet.

She comes hard, so fast that she isn't prepared for it, and it's only Bellamy's arms holding her steady that keeps her grounded to the moment, legs trembling, eyes closed, gasping. It's different from the dream, _better_ , so wildly out of control that all Clarke can do is try to keep breathing, her heart pounding frantically against her chest, swallowing down the moan that's threatening to escape her lips.

“Good girl.” The words are spoken so low and quiet that Clarke's not even sure she was meant to hear, but she does, and it makes her toes curl. Leave it to Bellamy to pin down her praise kink within five minutes of touching her.

She doesn't remember Bellamy standing up, but somehow her hands ended up on his shoulders and he's crowding her back against the wall, pressing against her. He's going to kiss her, she can see it in his eyes, and it's going to be filthy, tasting herself on his lips as a first kiss, and she wants it. She wonders if he can read that in her eyes, because he smirks, leans in-

Someone stumbles into the wall at the end of the hallway. Bellamy takes a swift step back from her, turning toward the noise. It's a big guy, clearly very drunk, and he leers at them when he goes past. It breaks the spell. They'd just _done_ that. She'd just let Bellamy Blake eat her out in a back hallway at a bar, _encouraged it._ And the truth is, she might have done more if they hadn't been interrupted. It's a rude awakening.

“I need-” Clarke stutters out, not meeting his eyes. Not now, not after that. “Um. Paper towels. For Raven,” and then she flees into the women's bathroom. Bellamy doesn't try to stop her.

 


	2. Chapter 2

They don't talk about it. It's almost like it never happened. Clarke might start to doubt that it did, except she'd ended up with a bruise on her inner thigh that was very, very real. It's funny, she thinks, how reality can feel less concrete than dreams. So they don't talk about it, but it does change things. The first few days after, it feels like they're both holding their breath, tiptoeing around each other, waiting for something to break. When it doesn't happen, it's like slowly breathing out. And then the next week, at trivia, a question sends Clarke off on a tangent about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and when she looks up, Bellamy is grinning broadly at her from across the table. It's a look so purely fond that Clarke's breath catches in her chest. He's never looked at her like that outside of dreams. In that moment, she'd realized they might kind of be friends... maybe.

She's been in his dreams a lot since the night in the hallway, but never because he's dreaming about her. The Bellamy that greets her each night is familiar, the one she's known for years, and who remains entirely unaware what's happening between them in the waking world. Clarke doesn't understand why she seems to be a blind spot for him. He talks about Raven, and Monty, and Harper, and even certain gatherings and parties they'd been at together, but it's like he has selective amnesia, and he can't remember her true self, who she is to him, even a little bit. It makes no sense to her. But then, neither does the fact that he can see her at all.

As complicated as her relationship is with Bellamy in the waking world, dream Bellamy has his own problems that are creeping into the dreams more and more. Though she never sees them in real life, dream Bellamy is bruised more often than not these days. She doesn't know if this is a reflection of his mental state, a physical expression of his mood, which has been withdrawn and melancholy, or something else entirely. He won't talk about them.

“Do you do this to yourself? Or is it someone else?” Clarke asks, trailing a finger over the bruise on his collarbone, barely peeking out from under the neckline of his shirt. They're lying on a blanket, in a vast field of snow, the universe spread out in impossible swirling patterns above them. The field is ringed by magnificent, powerful mountains, craggy and snowcapped, a rough hewn crown to their valley. Everything is stark white. It should be cold, but it isn't. Not even when Clarke had reached out, past the edge of the blankets and sunk her fingers into the icy snow. It had been vaguely cool against her skin, certainly not cold.

“It's nothing,” he says, his go to answer. He's said it so often that Clarke expects it at this point.

“You didn't use to have them,” she protests, but her voice is mild, her fingers tracing patterns around the blue and purple galaxies on his skin. He is warm, like he should be, even though the snow isn't cold.

“Maybe you just didn't see them before.” She pulls her hand back, sighing. He's staying closed off, and she isn't sure whether she's frustrated or relieved. It's so complicated, now, balancing two versions of one man.

He turns his head to the side to look at her, so Clarke mirrors him. They aren't touching, but they're lying close, fingertips nearly brushing. The moment stretches out, spanning centuries in just a few breaths. Anything is possible here.

He links his pinky with hers, a point of contact. An anchor.

Clarke is starkly cognizant that the state of their relationship in the dreams isn't something that could survive for this long in the real world. It's intimate, tactile, too close that anyone else would ever feel comfortable trying to come between them. But in the dreams, there is no one else. So this thing between can exist, go on, hover at the edges of things and not quite take that plunge into something definitively romantic or sexual.

She is aware that she loves him, this dream boy who knows her soul like his own. But Bellamy, the Bellamy who she's only barely getting to know- she doesn't know how to feel about him, other than desperately confused. And this, this relationship she has with his dreams, it only complicates matters. But somehow, in dreams, that never seems so important, not when she's lying under a star studded sky in the snow, her hand linked with his.

* * *

 

 

It's because they're sort of, maybe, friends, and Clarke would like to be able to upgrade that to just “friends,” that she ends up agreeing to help out Bellamy and Miller with repainting their apartment, when Miller tries to recruit “volunteers” from their friend group. Clarke's never been to their apartment in Astoria before, but when she arrives, she understands why they're painting it. The walls are a mix of dull mustard yellow, and violent red. It's like a hotdog threw up.

“We've been trying to get our landlord to let us paint it for two years,” Miller explains, popping the lid on a paint can. “And the only color he'd agree to was white. You'd think _anything_ would be an improvement, but apparently not.”

“It's going to take a few coats to get white over these colors,” Clarke comments. It's not like she's an expert in house painting, but she knows a little about paint in general, considering how many classes she's had in it. This is going to be a _job_.

“That's why we're splitting the work into two weekends.” Bellamy wanders out of the kitchen with a beer in one hand, raising it in acknowledgement to Clarke. “Bedrooms and bathrooms first, living room and kitchen next week.” Well, that explains why there are two beds shoved into the living room, and piles of boxes and other odds and ends. Miller's got a lot of video games, a surprising number of dress shoes, and the complete works of Shakespeare. Bellamy's stuff is, no surprise, mostly books. Her eyes wander over his pile of things- books, t-shirts, more books, and-

“Is that a box of historical pun novelty condoms?” Clarke asks, eyebrows raised.

Bellamy's ears go a little pink. “Murphy gave them to me as a joke birthday present when we were in high school.”

“Have you ever used one?”

Bellamy hesitates.

“Oh my god, you _have_.” Clarke can't help but laugh. It's just too good, and if her cheeks get a little warm from thinking about Bellamy in a situation the necessitates a condom, her mind flashing briefly to a dark hallway and heat crawling down her spine, she can cover it in the laughter.

“We were drunk, and it was all I had! It was actually pretty funny!” he protests.

“The girl didn't think so,” Miller mutters. Clarke can't breathe, she's laughing too hard.

 

Painting the apartment with the boys turns out to be more fun than Clarke expected. Miller and Bellamy needle each other constantly, which is great for Clarke, because she gets to sit back and listen to them tell embarrassing stories about each other- like the time a drunk Miller was convinced he could do backflip off the swings at the park, or the time Bellamy broke his ankle trying to climb through a window at Murphy's at 2 AM when they were fourteen. It's significantly less uncomfortable than it probably should be, slipping into this friendship role with Bellamy she really never thought she'd ever get a shot at.

Around lunch time, Monty shows up with pizza, and they sit on the floor in the living room, since the couch is piled with books from Bellamy's room, and take a much deserved lunch and beer break. It's nice, companionable, comfortable, and something Clarke never would have thought possible a few weeks ago. It should be awkward, sitting next to Bellamy on the floor, after everything that's passed between them, barbs and insults, and then that heated encounter in the hallway, but it's not. It feels right, to be here, complaining about how they can still see the red paint through the _three_ coats of white, slapping Bellamy's hand away when he tries to steal her garlic sauce. It feels good.

“Hey, but you can't paint the living room next weekend, because we have plans,” Monty interjects, when Miller and Bellamy get to debating what they're going to do with all the living room furniture while they paint; there's no way it's fitting into the bedrooms.

“We do?”

“Yeah, my best friend Jasper is coming to visit, remember?” Monty nudges Miller's shoulder. “I told you about it last week. And he already sent ahead a list of all the food he wants to sample while he's here.”

“Food tour across the city?” Clarke asks, eager. “I'm in.” There's so much novelty food in the city and Clarke usually doesn't seek it out, simply because it's generally not that convenient, but she's got a sweet tooth, inherited from her mother, so large that Abby had never allowed either of them to keep sweets in the house.

“Who's paying?” Bellamy asks.

Miller rolls his eyes, “Oh, _please_ , you've been looking for an excuse to do all the nerdy touristy shit you don't think you're allowed to do as a native for _years_.”

Bellamy's eyes light up, the expense forgotten. “Can we go to the Natural History Museum?” Clarke remembers the first time he'd gone, on a field trip in high school. He'd spent the entire night trying to properly recreate the rooms for her, hall after hall, from The Center for Space and Earth to the Ocean Life to the Ancient Cultures. He'd loved it then, and she's sure he'd love it now. Bellamy has an insatiable appetite for learning.

“That has dinosaurs, right?” Monty asks.

“Yeah, among other things.”

“Jasper would probably be down for dinosaurs.”

 

It turns out Jasper Jordan is “down” for most things. He arrives on Friday night, and Clarke meets him for the first time, bright and early on Saturday morning. He's long limbed, gangly, and looks younger than he is. He's also brimming with energy.

They're meeting in Brooklyn for rainbow bagels. Bellamy had grumbled slightly about the commute from Queens, but Clarke had reminded him he _could_ drive if he really wanted to. Bellamy, like Clarke, is one of the few members of the group that has a car, but he doesn't tend to use it unless he has to because he hates losing his parking spot, Clarke's constantly tempted to point out the logical flaw there, but she bites her tongue. Despite being a morning person, Bellamy's clearly not thrilled at the hour long subway ride it takes for him to get to Brooklyn in time for breakfast.

But even Bellamy can't contain his smile when faced with Jasper's sheer enthusiasm for the bagels, coupled with his complete lack of restraint; Jasper orders three, grinning broadly the whole time. When he catches Miller's raised eyebrows, Jasper simply shrugs and says, “Life should be fun.”

Bellamy orders a jalapeño and cheddar cheese cragel, which is somewhere between a croissant and bagel. Clarke knows her bagel when she sees it.

“Look,” she waves her galaxy bagel under Bellamy's nose, “it's bi like me!” It's swirled blue, purple, and pink, and she's gotten a cream cheese icing with sprinkles on the inside.

“Maybe you should have gotten a miniature one, if we're going for accurate representation,” Bellamy teases. She's not even _that_ short, but Bellamy likes to point out that he towers over her. She's told him multiple times that that's probably a side effect of not being able to tower over that many people, at his fairly moderate height of 5'11” (he insists he's 6' tall), but he brushes those comments off as if he hasn't heard them.

They've spilled out onto the sidewalk to eat, since the store is tiny and cramped, and even this early in the morning there's a line out the door.

“Well, in that case,” Clarke tells him, “yours fits you perfectly- hot, but cheesy.”

Bellamy snorts. “Fuck off.” He lets the flirtation slide, but the way she catches him looking at her a few minutes later makes it clear he didn't miss it.

“This is the gayest thing I've ever seen,” Miller states baldly, eying his rainbow bagel as he steps out to join them on the sidewalk.

“Well, _that's_ not true,” Monty comments mildly, cheersing Clarke's galaxy bagel with his own. She grins back at him, and they all ignore Miller's quiet grumbling about how ridiculous it is they came to Brooklyn for bagels with food coloring.

 

They meet up with Raven at the Natural History Museum after breakfast. She hadn't wanted to make the trek out to Brooklyn for bagels, but she'd been excited about the museum, specifically the Hall of Space. It comes as no surprise to Clarke, who knows Raven's childhood dream had been to be an astronaut. Sometimes Clarke wonders if that's something that went with Raven's knee, or if she'd abandoned that dream for other things earlier. She hopes one day her friend might tell her.

It doesn't take long, once inside the museum, for the group to start to dissolve, drawn by their different interests. They lose Bellamy in the Ancient Cultures hall, Raven to the Space hall, and finally Clarke, who doesn't have the stamina or enthusiasm of the boys, breaks off from the remaining members of the group who are enmeshed in the Hall of Biodiversity, and goes to look for Raven.

She finds her under a display of the moon, where guests can lie on their backs and look up at the projection. Clarke takes the much appreciated break this offers.

“How are you holding up?” she asks, as she settles on her back next to Raven.

“I'm fine.” It's Raven's standard response, but Clarke knows museums are tough on her knee- too much standing, and lots of walking. Sometimes she doesn't know where that line is with Raven, the one that divides the proper amount of concern and support from being overbearing.

They lie in silence for several moments, watching the slow shift of the projection above them.

“What's with you and Blake?” Raven asks, breaking the silence, finally.

“What do you mean?”

She senses Raven turn her head to glance at her, before looking back at the ceiling.

“You were holding hands earlier.”

“What?” No they weren't. Clarke's mind wanders back to the lobby, where the crowds had been oppressive and overwhelming and Bellamy had grasped her hand and pulled her through with him. It had only been for a few moments, just not to lose each other. It hadn't been _holding hands_. But he hadn't done it to anyone else. Was it instinct? Did she just happen to be closest? It had felt like how he is in the dreams, hyper aware of her, careful to never leave her behind. Could that carry into his actions in the real world? Does some piece of him remember? She's so lost to these musings, she nearly forgets to answer Raven at all.

“Hanging out at their place because of the painting has made it easier,” Clarke says, finally, and... “and there may have been an incident.”

“An incident?” Raven won't give it up until Clarke tells her now. She supposes it's about time she told someone, got some perspective on it. And Raven's her best friend. She's the best person to tell.

“I had an encounter with Bellamy at the bar the night of Lincoln's gallery party.”

“What _kind_ of encounter?”

Clarke glances around to make sure her voice won't carry to the other visitors. Luckily this hall is smaller and less crowded than some of the others, and she and Raven are in a recessed part of the floor, designed for viewing the moon display, alone.

“He um... went down on me in the back hall of the bar.”

“Excuse me, _what_? And you're just telling me now? What the fuck??”

“Ssssshhh, Raven, we're in public!”

“So were you when he-”

“-yeah, I _know_ ,” Clarke interrupts her. They settle for a few quiet moments.

“So, what are you guys, like, friends with benefits now or something?” Raven asks. “Are you secretly hooking up as a _thing_ now?”

“No! I mean, it was just that one time and we haven't talked about it at all or anything. I think we're just... you know, more relaxed? and not about to strangle each other anymore.”

“Kinky.”

“You know what I mean.” Clarke nudges Raven with her elbow. She's not sure what she and Bellamy are, but it's better than it was before, and Clarke supposes that's all she can ask for. Eventually she'll try to figure out the rest, but for now, she's content watching the moon.

 

“I take back everything, _this_ is the gayest thing I've ever seen,” Miller says, two hours later, when they're standing outside Taiyaki with unicorn ice cream cones, complete with rainbow sprinkles and shiny golden marshmallow horns.

Monty hesitates. “That might be true.”

Jasper's ice cream is already half gone; he consumes food at a faster rate than anyone Clarke's ever met.

“I've got a super metabolism,” he'd explained, shortly after being introduced to the group. “It's why I'm so skinny, and I need to eat like all the time.” He's proving that to be very true.

After the unicorn ice cream, Clarke takes a break from playing tourist to go home and get some art history homework done. She's been neglecting her classes a little bit recently in favor of her social life. It's hard to keep up with Raven and Monty, when neither seems to need to study.

She calls Harper at four to see if she's available to get pad cakes with everyone that night. It's Bellamy's job to check on Lincoln and Octavia, who had only just gotten back in town from a shoot. Harper had been running a 5k for charity earlier in the day, but had said he might be up for going out that evening.

“What the hell are pad cakes?” Harper asks, when Clarke extends the offer.

“Apparently it's pad thai deep fried in donut dough. You'll understand when you meet Jasper.”

So it's pad cakes on the Lower East Side and then it's a quick hop over to 169 Bar, which looks like it's been furnished by some eccentric old bachelor's estate sale. Raven whoops when she notices the leopard print pool table.

It's the best night Clarke's had in a while, but it's followed by a terrible hangover, that has her spending Sunday curled under her comforter and ordering fried food from the 24 hour diner down the street, rather than joining the group for a trek through Central Park and then shopping at Winter Village. It turns out, there's only so much of Jasper's food tour that Clarke can take- it's like the more you feed him the more energy he has, whereas Clarke just wants to sleep for two days straight. Clarke thinks bears have the right idea, because hibernating through winter sounds just fine to her.

On Sunday night Lincoln sends a group text, reminding everyone that his management is holding a private party at the gallery next Saturday for friends, family, and most importantly to his agent, potential buyers. They're all invited, which Clarke isn't sure is smart, but she's excited to get a chance to see Lincoln's work. She hasn't made it out to the gallery yet, and Clarke's even hoping she might meet some good contacts at the event. Lincoln doesn't talk about his art much, so Clarke isn't sure what to expect. He get surprisingly shy whenever it comes up, and while Octavia is perfectly happy to brag loudly about him for the both of them, she clearly has a biased opinion.

Clarke spends the rest of the week with her nose to the grindstone, trying to catch up with all the work she's put off. She even skips trivia, her first time this year, and so she only sees Bellamy in his dreams. There are even fewer of those than usual. Clarke doesn't know if that's due to something on her end, or if maybe Bellamy's buried in just as much work as she is and simply isn't dreaming. Or sleeping. She hopes he's sleeping.

When she arrives at Bellamy and Miller's on Saturday morning, she's greeted by a harried Bellamy in sweatpants, a t-shirt, and a pair of glasses that Clarke has never once seen on him, not even in his dreams.

“I didn't know you wore glasses,” she comments, stepping past him and into the apartment. There's plastic sheets draped over all the floor and the larger furniture that the boys hadn't managed to shove into their bedrooms.

“That's because I hate them.” Bellamy runs a hand through his hair. “Miller was supposed to be back by now, but he spent the night at Monty's and I think they had a late night. He hasn't been answering his phone. We have to leave here by 6:30 or so to get to Lincoln's party. Did you bring a change of clothes, or are you going to have to go home?”

Clarke holds up her backpack in answer. She hadn't wanted to make the trip all the way back to her apartment in between, even if getting ready at Bellamy's has meant she's had to haul her shampoo, conditioner, and other beauty products over with her.

Bellamy disappears to put his contacts in, which Clarke thinks is a bit of a shame; the glasses are a good look for him, but she gets that he doesn't want to risk getting paint on them. By the time he gets back, Clarke's already started on the first wall, laying down a base coat of the white, which only manages to make the wall a deep pink instead of red.

“Miller called,” Bellamy says as he joins her, paintbrush in hand. “He's on his way back now, so we shouldn't be short handed too long.”

Twenty minutes later, they've descended into bickering about Star Wars. Truth be told, as much as Clarke _likes_ Star Wars, she doesn't usually have particularly strong opinions, but something about Bellamy's certainty and mannerisms just brings out her need to fight.

Clarke rolls her eyes, dipping the roller back into the pan a little more aggressively than she might normally. Bellamy Blake is infuriating.

“Just because you were right one time at trivia doesn't mean you're right about this.” She straightens up, turning back toward the half painted living room wall, “Being a massive nerd doesn't mean you can predict the future.”

“It would be so much more poetic if Rey were a Kenobi.” Bellamy's voice is right behind her and Clarke whirls to face him, to tell him exactly why he's wrong, but he's closer than she expected- close enough that the paint roller in her hand smacks directly into his chest.

For a moment, they both just stand there, looking at the place where Bellamy's blue t-shirt is suddenly saturated with thick, goopy white paint. Clarke's gaze wanders up from his chest to meet his eyes. She registers the emotion there, the glinting light that screams war, exactly one moment before Bellamy swipes his paintbrush down the side of her face.

Clarke stumbles backward, sputtering, while Bellamy laughs, but she's got the weapon with the longer reach, and even when startled, Clarke's quick to use any advantage afforded to her. She gets him in the stomach this time, and Bellamy retaliates by splattering paint across her with a well aimed flick of his wrist.

It devolves into all out chaos. Clarke's serious when it comes to any sort of competition, and Bellamy is the same, something he proves every week at trivia night. Five minutes of flinging paint at each other later, and Clarke's sheltering behind the couch, white paint in her hair, across her face, all down one arm, and splashed all over the rest of her. She knows they're behaving like children, and that this is probably all a bad idea that they're going to regret later, but she doesn't care. It's light, and fun, and sends excitement and joy sizzling through her veins in a way nothing but carefree abandon can. It almost feels like some of his dreams. Clarke's got the paint tray, but Bellamy has the paint can, so she'll call it even, for the moment. She can hear Bellamy moving in the room, but can't see him. If she lets him come for her, she'll be cornered, which is an unacceptable losing position.

Clarke takes a chance, armed with one of the smaller paintbrushes, and darts out from behind the sofa, but is promptly hooked around the waist and hauled back against Bellamy's chest. She does _not_ scream, it's more of a startled yelp, that makes Bellamy laugh, the sound reverberating in his chest and against her back. She fights him, even as the paint he'd dumped on her seeps into her hair and slides down the back of her neck, squirming and getting a blind shot in to the side of his face with the paintbrush; it makes a satisfyingly wet slap when it connects. He huffs, stumbles back, and drags her with him, tumbling onto the sofa.

The plastic sheeting crinkles and sticks to the paint on their clothes and skin, and Clarke struggles to untangle herself, twisting and trying to fight off the plastic and Bellamy at the same time. With some effort, she ends up straddling him, panting and half squinting through the paint, but so close to victory.

“Surrender?” Clarke asks him. She feels wildly triumphant, heart thundering in her chest, blood singing victory.

Bellamy grins up at her, bright, and all too smug for the position he's in.

“That's not really my style.”

Before Clarke can retort, he flips them. The plastic sticks to his skin and goes with them, half wrapping them in it and pinning them together. He is suddenly close, too close. Almost as close as he'd been leaning up against her in the hallway at the bar. He seems to notice too, going still, face inches from hers.

In an instant, the atmosphere has changed, no longer light and playful, but instead heated, and Clarke's heart is slamming against her chest in a different rhythm now, unsure. She knows what her body wants, but it's complicated between them, so absurdly complicated. Bellamy's face dips infinitesimally closer, but closer all the same.

“What the _ever loving fuck_ happened here?” Miller's voice cuts into the moment, and Bellamy tries to roll away from her, but instead just tangles them in the plastic more.

“Fuck,” he grumbles, taking a slow, deep breath, then peeling the paint coated plastic away from them carefully this time.

Miller is standing over the sofa looking unamused. “Did you get any of the paint on the actual walls?”

Bellamy manages to get to his feet, freeing Clarke, and holding out a hand to help her up. The moment has passed, but she still notes how warm his hand is in hers. Miller frowns fiercely at both of them. If everything weren't covered in plastic, they'd have a hell of clean up ahead of them. As it is, they've wasted quite a bit of paint, but not done any serious damage to anything but their clothes.

Miller takes over the painting while Bellamy and Clarke take turns running through the shower, and Bellamy loans Clarke a t-shirt and some athletic shorts to continue painting, since the only other outfit she has is what she's planning to wear to Lincoln's gallery party. The t-shirt is well worn, soft, and is from Bellamy's high school soccer playoffs. It says 'Blake' across the back in big block letters.

“Are you sure you're okay if I get paint on this?” Clarke asks, because it seems like it might hold some sentimental value. She actively does not think about how girlfriendy it feels to wear a shirt with his name on it.

“Yeah, it's kind of small on me these days,” Bellamy says absently, and Clarke takes a moment to appreciate that, _yeah_ , with arms like that, it would be. He might catch her looking, if the smirk on his lips is anything to go by. Their moment on the sofa may be over, but it lingers in the air, in the unnecessary way Bellamy's rests a hand on her back when she slides past her in the kitchen to grab a bottle of water from the fridge.

Miller is a drill sergeant for the rest of the day, scolding both Bellamy and Clarke when they get sidetracked on debating the inherent time paradox in Back to the Future.

“It's not my fault we had to spend half the morning cleaning up the mess you two made,” Miller lectures them, and Clarke tries not to find it funny, but she only barely manages to hide a giggle behind her hand, and Bellamy's answering grin tells her she didn't do a great job of it.

“Yes, well, maybe if you'd _been_ here-” Bellamy starts.

“Shut up and paint, Blake.”

 

Bellamy's car is a boxy Honda civic circa 1997. Clarke believes it was once red, but she can't be sure. It's faded into an unpleasant sort of burnt orange color. It is, perhaps, one of the ugliest cars she's ever seen. But despite that, it's meticulously clean, and smells fresh on the inside. Bellamy takes care of his things, and this is just one example.

They're running very late. Despite Bellamy's insistence that he's got the timing down, Clarke seriously doubts they'll be arriving anything short of twenty minutes after the party is set to begin. She half wonders if it's on purpose. Bellamy had seemed nervous getting ready, fumbling a bit with a tie before abandoning it all together. She's not sure where those nerves are coming from - it's a party – but they're clearly there. She hadn't asked about it, because she's not sure now is the time, particularly not when they've been getting along so well.  
“We're going to be late,” Clarke says mildly, because they are, and she'd like for him to admit it. He'll have to- eventually. She can wait.

“You're pretty confident for someone who has been so wrong all day, Clarke.”

“ _Me?_ I'm not the one who mixed up Cornish Pixies and Doxies!”

Bellamy shakes his head. “A minor confusion.”

Clarke snorts and throws her feet up on Bellamy's dash, as they come to a stop at the light, lounging in a casual way that's at odds with her nice dress and strikingly high heels. He glares at her, but the corners of his lips have a definite upward tilt. She isn't sure what she can call them anymore. Friends seems... somehow like a word that doesn't quite encompass everything that is and has been between them, but she supposes they _are_ friends, possibly, at last.

He's softened significantly toward her in the past couple of weeks. He rarely calls her princess, and when he does it has a teasing edge, rather than the harsh mocking that had been there before. They still argue, but it's no longer raw and furious and Clarke is no longer frequently on the receiving end of Bellamy's sharp, judging looks.

But she still knows him a thousand times better than she should. He's not cruel to her anymore; he's even soft, sometimes, but much of the time he's still closed off from her. And by all accounts, they're still mostly strangers. Or they should be. Just because Clarke has an unfair insight into him, that doesn't mean he _wants_ her to know him like that.

“We're so late, O is gonna kill us,” Bellamy sighs, glancing at the clock on the dashboard. There's still a smear of paint behind his right ear, a flash of white.

“I told you we would never make it to Red Hook from your place in twenty five minutes.”

“I've lived here my whole life,” Bellamy protests, shoving her legs down from the dash, half playful, half annoyed. The light turns green, and Bellamy accelerates.

“And yet, we're definitely going to be late,” Clarke teases him, triumphant in her win.

“Well maybe if you didn't-”

It happens so fast, Clarke won't understand what really occurred until later. One moment, Bellamy's grumbling under his breath at Clarke's teasing, and she's vaguely aware of the fond smile on her lips, and the next the world goes entirely, terrifyingly black.

She gets memories of it back in bits- the sharp tangy smell of blood, a ringing in her ears, something hot and wet on the side of her face, and the muffled panic of Bellamy's voice. She thinks he's calling her name, and all of it's soaked in an inky darkness, thick like syrup, heavy in a claustrophobic way, like she can't get enough air in her lungs, and it's dark, so dark.

 

Clarke wakes up to bright lights and smell of antiseptic. If she fell into any dreams while she was unconscious, then for the first time she doesn't remember it.

She feels fuzzy, her head hurts, and her mouth is dry, but she recognizes that she's in a hospital immediately. She grew up floating in and out of the hospital, with her mother's job as a surgeon, and there's a feel to them, something about the lighting and the smell and squeak of shoes on the linoleum that is universal through all of them.

“Hey.”

Clarke startles at the voice next to her, turning her head, the world spinning a bit around her as she does so. Bellamy is sitting in the chair next to her bed, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, a cup of hospital coffee in one hand and a cast on his other wrist. He looks haggard, hair disheveled, five o'clock shadow across his jaw and visible dark circles under his eyes.

“How long?” Clarke manages to croak out, the words catching a little in her dry throat. Silently, immediately, he passes her a plastic cup with water, waiting for her drink it before setting it back on the table by his chair.

“Three days.” Bellamy's eyes slide down to stare at the floor and his shoes. She can just make out a line of stitches at his temple, nearly hidden by his shaggy hair. She wonders how long he's been here. He looks like crap.

“Your mom is down the hall; do you want me to-”

“-No.” Clarke loves her mother, but she needs a moment. She doesn't think she has the energy or a clear enough head yet. Abby Griffin takes preparation, and Clarke's running on dizzy, confused fumes.

“Raven's coming over after her classes,” Bellamy continues. “She's been spitting mad.”

“About what?” Her thoughts are starting to clear a little bit, but with them comes the pain, all down her right leg. If she felt up to lifting her head, she'd look down to see if she could assess the damage.

“The drunk driver that ran the light,” Bellamy explains, going to run his hand through his hair, but wincing and stopping himself. She wonders how badly he's hurt. With the grimace on his face, she suspects it's worse than he's playing it off.

“Are you okay?”

That tears an unexpected laugh from his lips, one that ends in a suppressed groan. “Clarke, I'm not the one in a hospital bed. Jesus, you've been unconscious for _days_.”

She stays quiet, waits for him to answer. This Bellamy is familiar to her. He deflects, but if she waits him out, she can get a real answer.

He gives in after several moments of silence. “A few broken ribs, fractured wrist, and some stitches. I'm fine.”

“Well, you look like crap,” Clarke informs him.

Bellamy laughs again, then clutches his side. “Fuck, don't make me laugh.”

“I thought you were 'fine'?”

Bellamy sobers, suddenly, his eyes going dark and haunted. “Relatively speaking.”

It terrifies her, but something about him sitting there, still there, three days later, it gives Clarke the courage to ask-

“My leg?”

Bellamy shrugs helplessly. “Broken. I don't know how badly. They won't tell me anything specific, since I'm not family. I know they were worried about your head injury, and you had to have some blood transfusions, but again, I don't have any details. Your mom knows, but...”

“But what?”

“Well, I don't think she's very fond of the guy who's responsible for her daughter being in the hospital.” Of course he thinks it's his fault. Bellamy always thinks the worst of himself, even if that sometimes means twisting around logic. It makes her angry with him sometimes; it's self centered even, in some ways, but she thinks she knows where it began, with his mother and the responsibility she laid on his shoulders, along with the blame.

“Bellamy-”

“-Don't. Raven already yelled at me for saying that.”

“Yeah, because it's stupid.” Clarke musters the energy to ease her upper body forward so she can get a look at her leg. It doesn't look like much, just the shape of her leg under the blanket.

“I don't have a cast,” she says, confused. There's _something_ attached to her leg, but she can barely feel it and what she does feel is _pain_ , so it's hard to tell what.

“Yeah. I think you have to have surgery? I don't know for sure.” Bellamy shrugs helplessly, looking distressed. He looks like he needs to sleep. She starts to tell him just that when her mother sweeps into the room.

“Clarke, you're awake!” Abby's smile is relieved, but strained around the edges. It's this look, more than anything, that drives home to Clarke how bad this must have been. Her mother is good at keeping it together, and she's a doctor. If she's smiling like _that_ it means there was probably a pretty good chance she might not have woken up at all.

“I'll, um,” Bellamy makes a sort of gesture toward the doorway and awkwardly shuffles out, leaving the seat next to Clarke's bed free for Abby. She considers asking him to stay, but that's not fair. Bellamy needs to go _home_ , get some sleep; he was in the accident too. It's just always easier with her mom with some sort of buffer. And she's starting to feel sleepy again, despite the pain in her leg.

“They're probably going to want to get you in to surgery today, after they make sure all your vitals are doing okay.”

“What's...” wrong with me? Is what Clarke was going to ask, but it seems a little too general. “broken?”

“Well, you have a pretty nasty oblique open fracture to your femur, but hopefully the antibiotics will take care of any chance of infection, and they'd normally want to have had you in surgery ASAP, but with your loss of blood and the head injury it was too risky, so they've got you in a traction splint, and now that you're awake, they'll likely go for intramedullary nailing to fix the break.”

Clarke blinks, her head swimming. “Mom, normal person English.”

Abby's expression softens. “Sorry.” She's probably been talking to doctors for three days straight, no need to translate anything. She watches her mother take a moment to mentally readjust.

“Your leg is broken, quite badly, the bone pierced the skin, but it looks like it's only in two pieces, which is good. I expect you'll have surgery this afternoon to repair the break.”

“Okay,” Clarke says, slowly absorbing the information. “How long is it going to take to get better?” And then, a worse thought, _will_ it get better? Sure, bones heal, but she's suddenly thinking of Raven and her knee brace, and maybe this is like that- something that won't ever heal properly.

“Three to six months is standard for this sort of break, but since yours is an open fracture- I mean, because it broke the skin, you've got muscle and tissue damage, so it could take longer. You're going to be on crutches, but hopefully somewhat weight bearing as soon as tomorrow, and you'll have to do physical therapy, but there's no reason why you shouldn't be fully recovered within a year or less.”

Clarke takes a deep breath. That sounds like a long time. That sounds like _a lot_. She shuts out all the projections of the future and instead focuses on today; she just has to get through today, and maybe she can go home tomorrow. Her mother finally takes the seat that Bellamy had vacated and takes Clarke's hand in hers.

“I know it's overwhelming, but I'm going to be here to help you out however you need. I've got a lot of vacation days saved up, and I can get a service set up to deliver groceries to the apartment and maybe a cleaning service?”

Clarke nods along absently as Abby starts planning exactly how they're going to manage this. She's drifting, exhausted. It's almost a relief when a nurse comes in to do some basic tests and then prep her for surgery. Soon, she'll get to go back to sleep.

 

It's weird to Clarke, to spend so much time sleeping and not in anyone's dreams. In the three days since she's been out of the hospital, she's slept more than what feels like the past three years. Some of it is the pain medication, which makes her fuzzy and distant. She wonders if that's what's blocking the dreams too.

Her mother has temporarily moved into Clarke's spare bedroom, and while she is grateful for all the time and help Abby is giving her (she knows the time is a big commitment from her mother), she is reminded again why living with her mother was always hard for her. Abby Griffin is a whirlwind, never slowing down, never letting up, and there is _always_ something to do. She's not very good at taking breaks. And even though Clarke manages to lure her into watching How to Train Your Dragon with her one night, by the end of the movie her mother is fidgeting.

Clarke's infinitely grateful for Raven's regular visits. She comes every afternoon after classes, but Clarke's knows it isn't easy for her. Raven usually avoids long commutes, and the way her eyes linger on Clarke's broken leg makes it clear to her just how uncomfortable this whole situation is for her. Clarke has a feeling it's bringing back all sorts of bad memories, even though Clarke still doesn't know how Raven's knee injury occurred. Raven isn't the most verbally affectionate person that Clarke knows, but this is how she shows her love, by showing up when someone needs her, no matter how difficult that is.

Clarke makes sure Raven's visits never overlap with her physical therapist. Raven's own physical therapy ended before Clarke even met her, but the forced levity in her voice when she talks about it implies it's still a sore spot. From what she's gathered over the course of their friendship, Raven had had a very difficult time accepting that no matter how much therapy and will power she invested into it, her knee was never going to fully recover. Clarke understands that- Raven is someone who likes to fix things, who often has a solution when no one else does, and who rarely fails. Clarke imagines it would be infuriating to not be able to fix this for herself.

The rest of Clarke's friends also drop by, but with the end of the semester creeping up, they're all incredibly busy. Clarke's gotten special permission from the university to finish her semester online, and with a few physical assignments being dropped off with her professors by her friends. So things have been working out okay, but she hasn't seen Bellamy. He's called, every day in fact. They talk about silly, unimportant things, and Clarke knows he's calling because he wants to make sure she's okay, because he still feels guilty no matter how many times she insists that it's not his fault, and she's talking and talking just to keep him there with her for a few moments. But he's got a deadline for his thesis advisor and a broken wrist, which makes everything take twice as long, and he hasn't made it over to visit, and with her drugged dreamless sleep, she misses him.

Maybe this is why she can't sleep, because everything seems too quiet, even with her mother in the guest room just next door, and she knows, when she closes her eyes, she won't fall into dreams, but into the black darkness and she doesn't know how long that's going to last. In the quiet, she finds herself thinking about those few moments before that car had plowed through the red light, Bellamy grumbling, his lips tilted up in a smile, the fondness that rose unbidden in her chest, and it had been perfect. And then- nothing, just the black. She doesn't want to return to that.

She's dialing his number before she can think better of it. Bellamy picks up on the third ring, his voice low and sleepy, “Hello?”

“Hi.” Now that she's done it, Clarke can't find all the explanations that had been bouncing around her head moments before. “I'm sorry, you were sleeping,” she says, soft.

“Clarke? Is everything okay? What's going on?”

“It's nothing- I shouldn't have called, I just couldn't sleep and... I don't know what I was thinking, it was stupid, it's just so quiet here and I-”

“Princess,” his voice rumbles over her rambling. “I can be there in forty five minutes.”

“Oh, no, it's the middle of the night, and I know you have that makeup class to TA tomorrow, and I don't-”

“Hey.” He's still speaking in that low, calm way, the sleepiness having gone out of his words. “Forget about all that. Do you want me to come over?” She does, but she shouldn't tell him that.

“Yes,” Clarke admits, voice small. She wants nothing more than Bellamy's solid, comforting presence. She's used to finding him in her sleep and he hasn't been there in days and days.

“Then I'll be there soon.” He hangs up before she can panic and protest.

He texts her when he arrives, rather than ringing the bell, so as not to wake her mother. And then he's there, in a pair of sweatpants and old shirt, hair tousled, standing just outside her door. It takes her a moment to meet his eyes, her doubts all rising in her throat. She shouldn't have called him. They're an inexplicable type of friends, probably not the type you call to keep you company at two in the morning. But the look in his eyes is all compassion.

“Hey, Princess.”

Something in Clarke caves; she takes two steps and then he's folding her into his arms, warm, solid, real.

He leaves his shoes at the door and follows Clarke back to her bedroom on quiet feet. She's less coordinated; she's been getting pretty good with her crutches, but it's still a lot of work, even to go a short distance. They linger in the doorway for just a moment, and Clarke's very aware that this is her bedroom, that it's a space Bellamy's never been in, but she shakes it off and props her crutches up against her nightstand and sinks back into her pillows.

When Bellamy hesitates, she pats the spot next to her and he sits, carefully, leaning back against her headboard. They've never done this, whatever this is, and Clarke isn't sure how to start, hadn't thought any of this through, which isn't like her. She'd just wanted to see him.

“Did you finish reading The Handmaid's Tale yet?” Bellamy asks, breaking the silence, and then it's just easy, the way it had been when they were painting, the way they've been the few times Clarke's gotten to be around him since they stopped fighting. When they can find their way to this place, everything feels easy.

She doesn't realize how long they've been talking until she glances at the clock on the wall and notices it's nearly 4:30 in the morning. Bellamy has his good hand draped lightly over his stomach and when he laughs or moves, she watches pain flit over his face. She'd forgotten about his broken ribs.

“You should lie down,” Clarke says, “that can't be a good position for your ribs.”

Bellamy waves her off, but complies, sliding down a little to rest his head on the pillow next to hers. “I've had my ribs broken before, it'll be fine.”

“What about your wrist?”

“That's a new one. It's damn annoying too. But at least it isn't my dominant hand.” He's quiet for just a moment. “But I mean, all things considered I don't have much to complain about.”

She doesn't know if she should ask, but she's been wondering- “What was it like? The crash?”

Bellamy inhales sharply. “It was... like a nightmare.”

Clarke nearly laughs because it's so fitting. She knows all about nightmares, even if she's never had her own. She knows all about his.

“I thought you were gone,” he admits, even softer.

Clarke reaches out, closes the gap and links her pinky with his. For a moment, she's in two places, here and in that snowy valley, lying next to Bellamy Blake, reality and dream melding into this one moment. She falls asleep like that, and when she does, for the first time since her accident, instead of the inky blackness, it's Bellamy's dreams that welcome her home with open arms.

* * *

 

 

Bellamy's phone alarm goes off at 6:30, which is way too early, and he apologizes as he's crawling out of the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Despite Bellamy's protests, Clarke gets up to see him out.

“Let me get you some coffee to go,” Clarke insists. They got such little sleep, she knows he's going to need it. He has to make it through two sessions of a makeup class for the professor he TAs for.

He gives in fairly easily, but looks like he regrets it when they find Abby sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in one and the The New York Times in the other.

“I'm just getting Bellamy some coffee before he goes,” Clarke says, by way of an explanation, when her mother looks up over her newspaper at them.

To her credit, Abby doesn't say anything about it until after Bellamy leaves.

“You didn't tell me you two were together,” she comments mildly, sipping on her coffee, a few minutes after Bellamy had ducked out of the door with a somewhat sheepish wave.

“We're not,” Clarke says quickly, feeling defensive, even though that's a pretty logical conclusion to draw from all this. She was in the accident while in Bellamy's car, he'd barely left the hospital while she was the ICU, and now he's here, sleeping in her bed with her. She _knows_ what this looks like.

“Does he know that?”

“Yes, Mom, he knows that.” The sort of knowing smile on Abby's lips... well, it isn't _wrong_ , exactly, but Clarke's feeling a little defensive.

“It's complicated,” she adds.

Abby just hums noncommittally.

“I'm going back to bed,” Clarke grumbles, and she swears she can feel the amusement rolling off her mother in waves all the way back to her bedroom.

 

Raven visits again that afternoon, and they lie on Clarke's couch and watch Legally Blonde and throw popcorn at the screen whenever Warner is in the shot.

“Oh, boo at the perv Professor too!” Raven yells throwing a handful of popcorn at the TV.

Thirty minutes later, Abby wanders in, having gone out to a yoga class to de-stress, and takes one look at the living room carpet, sighs, and heads for her bedroom.

“We'll clean it up,” Clarke yells, after her mother's retreating form. And they really mean to, but after the movie Clarke's sleepy again, and Raven has to go back to her apartment to work on homework.

“I'm pretty sure you're just abandoning me to Skype with Wells,” Clarke complains.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Raven says primly.

“You know he's my friend too, right? He's a terrible liar, he gets all guilty faced.” The last Skype call Clarke had with Wells, the day after she'd woken up after the accident, he'd barely been able to meet Clarke's eyes when Raven's name had come up. He's so gone for her, and Clarke had teased him mercilessly.

“That fucker,” Raven mutters. “We just talk sometimes, that's all.”

“Yeah, yeah, we'll pretend like I believe you.” Clarke throws a pillow at her. “Now go call your boyfriend.”

Raven flips her off as she goes.

Bellamy shows up an hour later, toting an armful of grocery bags and a tentative smile. She hadn't been expecting him.

“I thought I could make dinner?” he suggests. “It seemed like maybe your mom could use a break.” He glances back toward the bedrooms, like he expects Abby to appear at any moment, as he piles the bags onto Clarke's kitchen counter.

“You have a broken wrist.”

“It's fine, it's in a cast.” He does a double take to where Clarke's collapsed back onto the sofa. “Why is there popcorn all over the floor?”

“Warner Huntington the Third,” Clarke says seriously.

“Excuse you?” He's opening cabinets and drawers, producing pots and pans and utensils.

“I can't believe you don't recognize Legally Blonde, Bellamy. It's a very important movie. Elle Woods would be ashamed of you.”

“Sorry, but Octavia kind of controlled what movies I consumed for a very long time, and she leans toward things with more explosions and less... pink.” He's chopping onions, now, eyes on the knife and cutting board. “I kind of raised her,” Bellamy explains. “Our Mom died when I was sixteen. O was thirteen, so she was just going into her terrible teenage years. We technically moved in with my mom's second cousin, but she didn't have much to do with us, basically just offered up her house so we wouldn't be split up. She'd never gotten married or had kids, so we weren't really what she wanted, but I think she felt like she owed our mom for helping her out of a bad spot when they were young.”

Clarke is breathless, pinned to the edge of her seat, waiting for every word. She knows all this already, but he doesn't know that. This is Bellamy, real life Bellamy, telling her things he's only ever spoken to her in dreams.

“That can't have been easy,” she comments.

Bellamy snorts. “That's putting it lightly. When Octavia turned eighteen and told me she wasn't going to college I thought I was going to have a heart attack. And then she goes off modeling and comes back dating a twenty five year old.” He shakes his head. “I wanted to kill him, actually I wanted to kill both of them. But Lincoln's been good for her. She actually listens to him, and that's never been her strong suit.”

Clarke opens her mouth to ask him about teenage Octavia, but then at the end of the hall Abby's door opens and her mother comes striding into the kitchen. She only looks mildly surprised to see Bellamy there.

“Hello, Bellamy.”

“Mrs. Griffin.”

“Abby is fine. I didn't know you were visiting tonight.” It's a quiet question masked as a statement and Clarke's always despised the way her mother learned to talk like that, how everyone at her fancy rich people parties always talks like that.

“It was last minute. I just figured you and Clarke could use a break from dealing with meals,” Bellamy holds his ground well. It's not that Abby actually dislikes him, as far as Clarke can tell. It's just that her mother doesn't entirely warm up to people very quickly. She takes her time, feeling them out, and that's what she's doing here.

“Well, that's very kind of you,” Abby concedes.

It's all small talk after that, with her mother there, Bellamy answering a few questions about his degree and his sister and what it had been like growing up in the city, and Clarke trying to steer her mother away from topics she knows Bellamy might be sensitive to without cluing him in to the fact that she knows significantly more about him than she should.

After dinner is over and the dishes are all in the dish washer and her mother had run the vacuum cleaner over the living room carpet, shooting Clarke a disapproving look as she did so, Clarke takes Bellamy back to her bedroom before he can excuse himself. She knows she won't get anything personal out of him while her mother is around, and when it gets late, and he starts to rise from her bed, she takes his hand and asks him to stay, and yet again they fall asleep like that, holding hands, but otherwise not touching.

That night he dreams them into a world where they are gods and goddesses, and Clarke wears a golden crown in her hair, and holds the power to make oceans rise and mountains fall, and he stands at her shoulder and watches her shape the world.

It's an odd friendship, they develop, lingering between things, but Bellamy keeps showing up. Every evening, he's at her door. And every night, he falls asleep next to her, fingers linked. Raven gives her hell about it when she finds out.

“That's hardly _friendship_ , Clarke.”

“You and Wells,” Clarke fires back and Raven doesn't bring it up again.

Her mother doesn't comment on it at all, on the fact that Bellamy's always there in the morning, but she does start making enough coffee for all three of them when she gets up. As far as stamps of approval, that's probably as good as he's going to get with Abby.

Bellamy's been sharing her bed for almost a week when he has another sexy dream about her. When Clarke finds herself in it, things haven't progressed as far this time. They're both still wearing clothes (mostly), Clarke in a light floral sundress, one that she'd worn the last time she'd been at trivia, and it shouldn't surprise her because she'd caught Bellamy's distracted glances at her chest that he'd tried to hide more than once that night. She is decidedly _not_ wearing any underwear, straddling Bellamy's lap, the fabric of his jeans digging into her inner thighs. His fly is undone, jeans shoved slightly down, his shirt discarded, and she can feel the hard length of him pressed up against her, his underwear the only thing separating them.

He's leaning back and watching her from under his lashes, propped up by one arm, with his other hand on Clarke's shoulder, toying with the spaghetti strap of her sundress. The emotion of the dream begins to seep into her then. It's breathless and intimate and slow, his fingers tracing random patterns on the skin of her shoulder, over her collarbone. Everything is shifting in and out of focus, little bits of the world around them penetrating Clarke's consciousness absently- they're in the bed of a truck, under the stars, and somewhere in the distance there's the rumble of voices, laughter. Bellamy's got a little bit of a thing for semi-public sex, it seems. It's all remote, however, the only thing real is the points of contact where their skin touches. Bellamy's in no rush, but Clarke's a little less patient, rolling her hips slowly against him, the friction of his cock and the fabric of his underwear against her clit sending sparks shooting down her spine. She doesn't realize she's biting her lip until Bellamy's thumb is there, tugging her lip free from her teeth.

“Hey, princess, look at me.” His voice is darker, a little deeper than normal, and she does as she's told, meeting his eyes as she takes his thumb into her mouth, sucking lightly and swirling her tongue around the tip. The hitch in his breathing, coupled with the slight jerk of his hips is his response. Bellamy's gorgeous like this, cheeks flushes, pupils blown, and Clarke's never wanted something so badly in her life.

Pain, fierce and shocking hits her suddenly, racing down her right side, and she jerks backwards, crying out and-

Clarke catapults into consciousness sharply, suddenly, and the pain lancing down her side that had shocked her so badly in the dream is no longer a mystery. She'd rolled onto her bad leg in her sleep, putting too much pressure on the recent break. She quickly flips onto her back, but the pain doesn't leave entirely, only settles into a dull ache that radiates from her leg into her lower torso and back. She takes a few deep breaths to settle her racing heart, then turns her head to look at Bellamy.

He's still asleep, lips parted slightly, curls wild against his temple and the pillow. He's just as beautiful as he was in the dream, but everything's starting to clear for Clarke now and the guilt is creeping in among the desire. She shouldn't have let that happen, not even as far as it went. It's not just a dream- not when she's experiencing it with him. It's an invasion of his privacy, even though she doesn't mean it to be, and Clarke wants to scream with the unfairness of it all, that Bellamy's asleep and probably in the middle of fucking dream Clarke right this very second and she's here, with guilt in her chest, an ache in her leg, and a beautiful boy in her bed who she hasn't been honest with.

* * *

 

 

Abby leaves on Monday. Clarke's shocked by it, because she'd thought her mother was going to be taking three weeks, and it's only been two since the accident.

“You don't need me here, baby. I'm just getting in the way.”

“But I have to start going in to the physical therapist instead of having home visits tomorrow,” Clarke protests. Sure, part of her really wants her space back, particularly if Bellamy's going to continue to have sex dreams about her, because boy is _that_ a test to her resolve that nothing should happen between them until she tells him everything, but she's still scared to see her mother go. She doesn't know how to handle all this on her own.

“Bellamy said he wanted to take you,” Abby replies. “And he's who you want to lean on, Clarke. That's okay. That's normal, sweetheart.”

“We're not together,” Clarke tells her for about the hundredth time.

“Well, you're something.”

“It's...” And the thing is, her mother is one of the only people who already knows the pieces of it she's reluctant to tell anyone else. Wells is the other, but Clarke doesn't want him to have to keep it from Raven any more than he already is.

“Bellamy's dreams are special,” Clarke says finally.

Abby stops mid-sip of her coffee. She swallows slowly. “Special how?”

They don't talk about Clarke's dream jumping often. It had been a focus during her childhood, when she'd gone from doctor to doctor searching for an explanation. Once it was clear they weren't going to have one, they'd stopped talking about it much. Clarke never liked explaining it to anyone else, anyway. It only made her feel different, and not in a good way.

“I've been jumping into his dreams since I was fourteen.” Clarke watches that information sink in slowly, Abby's brain whirring.

“But he was living here when you were fourteen, wasn't he?” Her mother keys into the critical piece of Clarke's statement quickly.

“Yes. Distance doesn't seem to have the same constraints on Bellamy's dreams. And... he also sees me.”

Abby's eyebrows shoot up. She knows enough about the dream jumping to know that's a huge anomaly. There's no precedence for Clarke's abilities anyway, but at least they'd always been consistent. But Bellamy Blake, he's one big question mark.

“Does he remember?”

Clarke shakes her head, feeling all the guilt welling up inside her. “No. And that's why it's complicated. I've known him for eight years, Mom. And he has no idea, and he's only just starting to trust me and he's telling me things now... I don't know what to do.”

Abby considers this, gazing into her coffee cup. She looks up at Clarke finally. “Do you love him?”

“I-” Clarke balks under the directness of the question. “I love him in his dreams,” she answers, finally. “I think I could anywhere.”

Her mother nods, thoughtfully. “Then you already know you need to tell him everything, I don't have to tell you that. The longer you wait, the worse it's going to be.”

Her mother is direct, not one to sugarcoat things. Abby's right, but Clarke _hates_ that that's her answer. She's spent her whole life keeping this a secret, and a good portion of it keeping Bellamy a secret. She's buried it all so deep she doesn't know how to let it out anymore.

“Some part of him already knows, Clarke,” her mother says when she hugs her goodbye. “He probably can't explain it, why he's here all the time when you two are 'barely friends,' but some piece of him knows.”

And Clarke's suddenly thinking about that night, with Bellamy drunk in her passenger seat, when he'd looked at her with big, vulnerable eyes and asked why she looked at him like she knew him, why it felt like she _did_ know him, even though she couldn't possibly. He _does_ know, he just can't remember.

 

That night, when Bellamy shows up to her apartment, he's quiet, and all the words Clarke had told herself she was going to say to him dry up in her throat. He looks exhausted, and when he tries to smile he can't quite manage it. She wants desperately to ask him what's wrong, but she knows if he wanted her to know he would have already told her. He isn't ready to talk about it, whatever it is.

But when she enters his dreams, she finds him bruised head to toe. They're in a desert this time, a wide expanse of sand, as far as the eye can see. He's sitting on the side of dune, face turned to the sun. It reminds her, oddly, of the first time she'd see him bruised, lying in that hammock. He'd faced the sun that day too.

She sits down next to him slowly, reaches out a hand to gently touch the purpling on his arms. And it makes tears well up in her eyes, her throat tight, because it's never been this bad and it shouldn't exist at all.

“I had an accident at work-”

“You're a TA, Bellamy, what sort of TA accident causes _this_?”

He frowns, looking away. She has her suspicions about this, something that's been building quietly in the back of her mind, but it seems too terrible to be true.

“Just let it go, Clarke.”

She has one final card to play. “Would you let it go if it were me?”

Bellamy's jaw works, tension building. If he says yes, she'll know he's lying. “If it were you,” he finally answers, “I would never let it happen in the first place.”

Clarke nods, because this sort of sentiment is exactly what she'd expect from him, even though he wouldn't have any way to enforce it. If it were her, it wouldn't be something he had any control over, but Bellamy's convinced he can protect everyone around him, but he doesn't have that same determination and fire when it comes to protecting himself. “Why can't you love yourself that much?”

He doesn't answer. She doesn't think he has one. And they don't speak, they don't even look each other in the eyes the rest of the dream.

 

She tells him about her father the next day, instead of what she should be telling him. About how her dad's favorite place in the world was Croatia, and he always promised he'd take Clarke there for her birthday when she turned sixteen, but he'd died from a heart attack when she was twelve and she's never made it. She tells him that her father's favorite book was Oliver Twist and he always seemed to relate to characters who were orphans, and that she'd eventually discovered that was because he'd been adopted as a young child and never knew his biological parents. She tells him about how her father preferred sorbet to ice cream and loved thunderstorms and thick wool socks. She tells him things that matter, but that don't change anything. Baby steps. Clarke's working her way up to the dreams, but for now she's practicing, with things she told him in the dreams already. It's just, it would be scary enough if it were any other time, but she really needs him right now. He's her rock in this recovery, and she knows she has Raven too and her other friends, but Bellamy's taken the lead. He's the one who drives her to physical therapy- luckily the insurance had come through and paid for his new car, and he's the one who sits there and encourages her, or holds her hand, or gives her a little bit of tough love when she needs it.

His presence in her life has become vital, like oxygen or sunlight and she doesn't know what she'll do if finding out about the dreams sends him shying away. Clarke's never been very good at opening up to people to begin with, so this is... big. This is, she imagines, a secret nearly as deep and terrifying to her as what's causing Bellamy's bruises, just in an entirely different way.

She's had a lot of time to reflect on why Bellamy's been bruised in her dreams. But she almost doesn't want to give thought to the darkest suspicions in her mind. It's something he so desperately does _not_ deserve, and she almost feels that if she allows herself to consider it, it'll make it true. And she hasn't had time to look for signs to see if her theory is possible, so she chooses to keep it close, for now. She hopes, gravely, that she's wrong.

They have “Friend Christmas” at Clarke's this year. Normally Clarke would go home and take Raven with her, but it's still a lot of work for her to get around and Abby's been working overtime to make up for how much time she took off after Clarke's accident. She has the most space of any of her friends, and she offers Raven the guest room so that she doesn't have to make the trip home after in the cold and the snow.

It's still a bit of crowd, but Clarke likes it better like that. Bellamy is there, but Clarke doesn't really consider it visiting, since he's practically at her place every day and most nights too. Octavia and Lincoln had opted in to “Friend Christmas,” rather than making the trip back to San Francisco where Lincoln's family is. Harper can't make it, having headed home to visit her parents, but Monty and Miller come, Raven of course, and even Bellamy's high school friend Murphy and his girlfriend Emori. Apparently neither have family, and Bellamy had reconnected with Murphy after that infamous night at the bar. Emori is fierce and a little intimidating and Clarke likes her immediately.

The others insist that Clarke doesn't have to help cook because she's providing the location, but it's obvious they're just trying to be sensitive to her broken leg and that fact that she's still gets worn out just walking from her bedroom to her living room.

Bellamy makes sure she's settled on the sofa with her leg comfortably positioned before he joins the others in the kitchen; it doesn't go unnoticed. All their friends know that Bellamy has been helping Clarke out by taking her to physical therapy, but none of them, except Raven and maybe Miller, know how much time they've been spending together, and that's only if Miller's making it home from Monty's. None of them know about how he's spending his evenings at the kitchen breakfast bar, in the glasses he hates to wear in public, drinking coffee and writing and rewriting his thesis, or grading papers. They don't know that most nights they fall asleep, fingers tangled together, heartbeats falling into sync. And even Bellamy doesn't know the adventures they go on in his dreams.

Octavia watches Bellamy carefully as he steps into the kitchen, eyes flicking between him and Clarke on the sofa, and Monty suppresses a knowing smile. But it's Raven who says something, plopping down on the end of the couch by Clarke's feet. She's been kicked out of the kitchen as her lack of cooking skills had become alarmingly apparent. Clarke has no doubt Raven _could_ cook, if it's what she wanted to do, but as it is, she sees it as a waste of time that she could be working on one of her projects and she's never bothered to develop the skill. It's refreshing, that there's something Clarke's better at than her, if only marginally.

“So, what's the update on your thing with Blake?” Clarke doesn't know why Raven insists on calling Bellamy by his last name. “And don't try to throw Wells at me this time, it's not going to work, because Wells doesn't know where every dish and utensil is in my kitchen.”

To be fair, neither does _Raven_ , Clarke suspects, but instead she says, “That sounded weirdly dirty.”

Raven raises her eyebrows. “Is it?”

“ _No._ Look, he's been helping me a lot since the accident and we've gotten pretty close. Nothing has happened like that.”

Raven snorts. “You don't just back up from eating someone out in public to 'pretty close.'”

“That was _one time_ ,” Clarke hisses, really hoping no one else, particularly Octavia, heard that. “And it wasn't public, it was... public-ish.”

“Semantics.”

“It's just complicated,” Clarke says, quiet. “He's special.” In so many ways.

Raven grins, smug. “I give it three months before you're that nauseatingly cute couple.”

And, to be honest, even though she smacks Raven with a throw pillow, Clarke can't help but think there could be so many worse outcomes than that.

 

Everyone leaves after dinner except Raven and Bellamy. They'd agreed not to exchange gifts as a friend group, since everyone is broke, and gift giving can get awkward fast, so by 10 pm, it's just the three of them left in the apartment. Raven excuses herself “to make a phone call,” (Wells) and Clarke cackles until Raven yells at her to shut the fuck up from the guest bedroom.

“What's going on there?” Bellamy asks, careful not to jostle her leg as he sits next to her on the sofa with two mugs of hot chocolate, passing her one.

“I'm not allowed to tell, but Raven's being stubborn as usual.”

Bellamy laughs. “Sounds like her.” He's fidgeting, which isn't like him, or at least not since he's gotten used to spending so much time in her apartment. He seems almost as comfortable here as he does at his own place.

“What?” Clarke asks, nudging him.

“Okay,” he starts, grinning sheepishly, “I know we weren't supposed to do presents, but...” He fumbles with the pocket of his jacket, and she sees a flash of something metallic, before he reaches for her hand. “I didn't wrap it or anything, and it's not much, I just saw it and couldn't resist.” He's rambling, his cheeks a little pink.

Clarke lets him press it into her hand, warm from being in his pocket. It's a ring; she can feel it the moment he places it in her hand, and when she looks down she sees a smooth rose gold band, and there, delicately etched, is a small crown. It's so achingly sweet, intimate to their relationship in a way that others wouldn't understand, that Clarke tears up a little bit looking at it.

She slides it onto the ring finger of her right hand, and all she wants to do is hug him, but she can't reach because of her fucking stupid broken leg.

“I love it,” she manages to croak out, tears still threatening, “but I didn't get you anything.”

Bellamy's shoulders relax. “It's not much, really. I'm just glad- I don't exactly have a lot of experience with jewelry. Octavia never wanted it as gifts, and the last time I bought any was for my ex, Gina, and I'm still not sure if she actually liked it.”

“I'm sure she did,” Clarke says, because Bellamy is thoughtful, so whatever he purchased for her would have been thoughtful, just like the ring Clarke can't stop looking at.

Bellamy's rubs at the back of his neck with his good hand. “I don't really have a great track record with relationships, to be honest.”

Clarke laughs. “You met Finn, so neither Raven or I are doing much better. She hasn't dated since, because Finn was such a disaster, and my ex Lexa left me for _her_ old ex Costia, so.”

Bellamy's had two serious relationships in the time that she's known him from the dreams- Roma and Gina. And while Clarke knows a decent amount about both girls, he's never given her much detail about why the relationships ended. She hadn't wanted to try to force it out of him, and he'd been hurting, so she'd let it be. But she's always been curious.

“My first serious girlfriend, Roma, cheated on me,” Bellamy says, and though the words are harsh, he doesn't sound particularly upset about it. Clarke recognizes this as a wound that healed long ago. He takes a sip of his hot chocolate. “I was furious. I just... couldn't believe she'd done that. I thought we had a really honest relationship. It was never perfect or anything. I don't think either of us expected it to last long term; we were nineteen and wanted something carefree and fun, but... I was really hurt by that. I'm glad it ended when it did, though, instead of dragging out longer.

“And Gina... Well, she dumped me because I just wasn't ready for the level of commitment that she wanted from me. I still feel guilty about that because I never had a good _reason_ I couldn't commit the way she wanted. And she was... light, and she had this amazing way of seeing the good in everyone and I should have wanted that more than I did. It was just like... we didn't quite fit right, and I always felt weirdly guilty about it all, like there was someone else I was supposed to be loyal to- which is ridiculous, I know. I should have broken up with her then, but I kept thinking that feeling would go away. She picked up on it instead and left me, and I really don't blame her.”

Clarke shouldn't read too much into that, she _shouldn't_ , but like her mom said, there's some part of him that remembers her, remembers everything between them. And she can't help but wonder...

“Hey, assholes, I'm putting shots in my hot chocolate, you want any?” Raven's question startles them; she's standing in the hallway from the bedrooms, at the entrance to the kitchen.

Clarke groans. “I can't mix alcohol with my pain medication.”

“I'll take some,” Bellamy raises his cup in acceptance.

“Traitor,” Clarke mutters, and Bellamy's responding grin is enough to light up the room.

* * *

 

 

She and Bellamy have their first real fight since their relationship shifted from unwilling acquaintances to friends in the middle of Clarke's physical therapy, a week after New Years. It's been a rough session, and Clarke's sick of how slow her progress is. Bellamy's fully recovered from the accident at this point, and he'd gotten his cast off the previous Friday, regaining the full use of both hands. And it's not like she isn't happy for him, because she _is_ , but his whole recovery process has taken a total of five weeks, and Clarke's still looking at an estimated four more months _minimum._

So when she still can't take more than two steps without collapsing back to her crutches, she's _frustrated_. And Bellamy, well, Bellamy's right there, fully healed, and being supportive and it just pisses her off a little bit.

“Come on, Clarke,” he says, voice so infuriatingly patient. “You can do three.”

“No,” she snaps. “I _can't_ do three. I can't take three fucking steps on my own.”

“Hey,” Bellamy says, soothing. “It's only been a few weeks, the fact that you can put your full weight on it at all is really good progress.” But it doesn't _feel_ like enough. Clarke hates this, that she's pretty much trapped in her apartment unless Bellamy's come to take her to physical therapy, and then they come _here_ , where her progress is measured in steps. And Clarke's only at two.

“This is bullshit,” Clarke mumbles.

Bellamy sighs. “Clarke-”

But she's just so frustrated, disappointed in herself, and she can't help snapping. “You don't have to be here just because you feel guilty!”

Bellamy flinches, like she's landed a physical blow, but then his eyes go dark, angry, though when he speaks his voice is steady. “That's not why I'm here.”

“You sure about that?”

“I am. Is that really what you think I'm doing here?” And his patience is wearing thin, his own frustration simmering just under the surface.

“I don't know why the fuck you're here, to be honest. You didn't even want to be in the same room as me two months ago. Just because we were in a car crash doesn't mean I'm suddenly a different person you might actually like.” She knows, even as it's coming out of her mouth that it's all pure crap. She's saying things to piss him off, and she's not even mad at him. She's mad at herself, and she just wants him to be mad at her too. She feels like she deserves it, for being so weak.

Bellamy closes his eyes and takes a slow, controlled breath in through his nose. “I'm going to get the car, and maybe by the time I get back you'll have figured out how fucked up everything you just said is.”

She simmers in the car on the way home, and Bellamy doesn't try to talk to her. Clarke tries to keep the anger burning, but it's fading, slipping slowly away and leaving behind the emotion Clarke is trying so desperately not to feel- the crushing disappointment, the failure. She's exhausted, and there's still so much further to go.

Clarke breaks down, halfway up to her apartment, her arms shaking and her knees buckling, as the exhaustion sets in, the tears finally spilling over. For one moment, the crutches are the only thing keeping her up, and then Bellamy's there, scooping her into his arms, and gathering her close. It's such a relief, and she turns her face into his chest and cries.

“I'm just so tired,” she chokes out.

“I know, Princess.” The elevator comes to a halt at her floor and Bellamy carries her out, and into her apartment. They settle onto her sofa, Clarke in his arms; she's still crying, but it becomes a little less violent as his presence calms her.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers. Not about this, but about what she said before.

“I know that too.” Bellamy's rubbing calming circles into her back, and he really is too good for all of this. She feels his chest rise and fall with a deep breath.

“I'm sorry too,” he says, finally, “about how I was before.” She wonders how long that's been on the tip of his tongue, unsure if he should mention it at all. The way he'd been before- all the passive aggressive comments about her life, her money, her choices, the arguments, all of it. She hadn't exactly helped matters, and there had been more at work there than he understands, but even though that version of him feels so distant these days that she can barely remember it, it feels good to hear.

“I'm sorry I'm such a mess,” Clarke responds, because if they're apologizing for things, that's a pretty big one right now.

Bellamy drops a kiss to the top of her head, casual, like he's done it a million times. “You're not a mess, you're a work in progress,” he says, and Clarke's heart swells in her chest, and there's no longer any point in denying it- she loves dream Bellamy, but she loves this Bellamy too, that's all of him, and it's a sweet surrender.

* * *

 

 

Clarke's Dad had always made a big deal out of her birthday. He'd always go all out, decorate the whole house, let Clarke eat anything she wanted, and buy her some ridiculous over the top present that her mother never approved of, like diamond watch when Clarke had just learned to tell time, or an actual roller rink the year she'd been obsessed with her pink Barbie roller skates, or one particularly memorable year, a pony. The first year after he'd died, her mother and Wells had spent the day tiptoeing around her, unsure how to handle it, but Clarke had missed the tradition, not so much the gifts, which looking back on had bordered on, if not crossed the line into, a bit obscene, but the seriousness with which he took it, how special it always made her feel. She's generally never been thrilled at being the center of attention, but something about her birthday was different. And when she'd expressed as much, her mother and Wells had taken over the holiday full force, and with a gusto that had been nothing short of shocking. Abby Griffin isn't an “all out party” sort of person, and it's that she takes this so seriously that tells Clarke just how much she loves her.

Wells flies into the city the night before Clarke's birthday, and her mother is set to drive in in the morning. Clarke has no idea what's planned, but she knows things probably got rearranged after her accident. She's not exactly up for a trip to Six Flags, or well, a lot of things a lot more low key than that at the moment. Abby's booked a hotel for herself, since she'd assumed Wells would be staying at Clarke's, but Clarke has her suspicions that's not where he'll be spending most of his nights.

She wants to go to the airport to pick Wells up, but Bellamy had talked her out of it, since there really is no good way to get around easily at LGA on crutches, even from the short term parking lot to the baggage claim, particularly now that so much of the airport is under construction.

“It's so close to my place, I'll take Raven and get him, and we'll come back here,” Bellamy insists, and Clarke knows they're just looking out for her, but she's so frustrated by her own limitations. But maybe this way, Raven will get to greet Wells more privately, which she deserves, and Clarke uses this logic to try to come to terms with it.

The group makes it back to her apartment just after 11:30. Clarke's been trying to pass the time waiting by watching reruns of The Office, but she's too anxious to pay attention. She hasn't seen Wells since his visit back in June, and she's missed him. It's hard to keep up, with him in school in California. She constantly complains about how far away he's gone, but he never listens. He likes the beaches, he teases.

The hug she practically assaults Wells with the moment he steps through the door is more clunky that usual, her stupid crutches getting in the way, but she doesn't care, because even though they might go weeks without talking, Wells is her oldest friend in the world, and she knows he'll always be there for her. They fall back together seamlessly, with a practice built from years of doing so.

“Careful,” Wells teases, when she pulls back and nearly hits him with a crutch.

“You're _here_ ,” Clarke responds, and it's been far, far too long.

“Well, Bellamy and I might as well not exist,” Raven says loudly from the doorway.

“Shut up, I see you all the time,” Clarke grumbles, but maneuvers herself back to the couch so everyone can come in and get settled. It's not like Wells has never been to her place before, but he's here so infrequently that's surreal to see him sitting right there.

“Do you want anything to drink?” Bellamy asks, and Clarke feels bad for not thinking to ask.

“No I'm good,” Wells assures him, and Bellamy nods, heading for the kitchen, “Raven?”

“Do you have any of that whiskey left?”

“No, you drank all of it last time you were here,” Bellamy responds, and Raven goes after him to make sure, leaving Clarke alone in the living room with Wells.

“So, do I get any birthday hints?” Clarke asks.

“Nope.” Wells grins at her; he has a smile that reminds Clarke of sitting in front of a fire on a rainy day, it's not blinding, or stunning, it's steady and safe and warm.

“You can't tell me anything?” Clarke loves that they make a big deal out of her birthday, but she's never been good at surprises, she's too nosy for that.

Wells leans back into the couch cushions. “Your mom gets you first, we get you later.”

“You just wanted an excuse to sleep in,” Clarke teases, but her mind is already whirling away considering possibilities, but the thing is there's a million and one things to do in NYC, and no way to narrow it down. Okay, her injury narrows it down, but still not enough.

Raven and Bellamy come back into the living room with glasses of water. “You not being able to drink really cut down on your alcohol selection,” Raven complains, nudging Wells over so she can sit. It occurs to Clarke, at some point in the next hour, amidst the teasing and laughter, that these are the people she's closest to in the world, all in one room.

Around one in the morning, Wells gives in and says he needs to go to bed; he's been on planes and in airports all day, and he's ready to get some real rest. Raven's already dozing on the sofa, so Clarke leaves her where she is, and Bellamy gets up to take the water glasses back to the kitchen, a perpetual mother hen. Clarke's just finished reminding Wells that there are towels under the sink in the guest bathroom, and hugged him goodnight when she bumps into Bellamy putting on his shoes by the door.

“You're not staying?” He almost never goes home this late anymore, unless he has to be back in Queens early in the morning. It's a straight shot on the R, but it's still a pretty long way to go at this time of night. Bellamy's neighborhood isn't dangerous, and he lives only a five minute walk from the subway, so she doesn't worry, she just doesn't want him to go.

“I-” Bellamy glances at Raven, who's asleep on the sofa, and then to Wells' door. “You've just got a lot going on.” He doesn't want to make things awkward, Clarke surmises, with her other friends here, they can't ignore the implications of the nights he spends in her bed. But Raven already knows and Wells would never say anything about it.

“Stay.” Clarke takes his hand. “You can be the first person to wish me happy birthday in the morning.” It doesn't take much convincing. Bellamy spends more nights at her place than his these days anyway.

“You know,” he says softly, when they're lying in the dark twenty minutes later. “It's technically already morning.”

“Technically.”

“Happy Birthday, Princess.” She swears she can hear his smile.

* * *

 

 

Bellamy wakes her up just after nine, and Clarke's not convinced she's ready to get up, but he's insistent, and coaxes her out of bed with fresh coffee and a painkiller, so she's up and dressed within twenty minutes, and apparently her mother is due to pick her up about ten minutes after that.

“I have something for you,” Bellamy says, once Wells and Raven go to try to make breakfast in her kitchen after having burst into her room while singing a truly terrible rendition of _Happy Birthday_.

“I thought gifts were later,” Clarke says, and unconsciously touches the ring on her finger. Bellamy's not been very good at sticking to rules about gifts. She doesn't know if she can handle another gift from him so poignant and sweet without too many of her feelings swirling past her lips.

“Yeah, well, when you see it...” he produces a small plastic silver tiara from behind his back. It says _Birthday Girl_ in a swirling cursive script, the kind of thing you could pick up at a Party City, and Clarke's relieved because it's cute, but more a joke than anything.

“I'm pretty sure that's for children,” Clarke says, but steps forward to let him settle it on top of her head anyway. Most of the time, Clarke prefers to fade into the background a little, but being the center of attention on her birthday makes her feel close to her dad in a way that little else does, it's almost like he's there. He would have loved the tiara.

“You don't have to wear it,” Bellamy says.

“Yes I do, it's my birthday.” And with that she lifts her chin and makes the most dignified exit from her room she can on crutches.

 

Abby takes her to High Street on Hudson for brunch, where Clarke eats two almond chocolate croissants and drinks her weight in expensive coffee. Her mother opts for a slightly more dignified breakfast tartine, but seems almost as happy about the coffee as Clarke is. And though Clarke is itching to ask her mother what the rest of the day is going to entail, she knows all will be revealed with time.

She catches Abby glancing at the tiara a few times during breakfast, and finally offers to take it off. She knows her mom isn't always comfortable being silly in public, it's just not in Abby's DNA, but to Clarke's surprise she just smiles softly and shakes her head.

“It's just something your dad would have done for you,” is all she says about it, and Clarke's so stunned she thought the same thing, that it takes her a moment to recover.

“Have you told Bellamy about the dreams yet?” Abby asks, and the guilt must show on her face because before she even answers her mother puts her hand on hers on the table. “We won't talk about it today. Another time.”

It's only after the dishes have been cleared from the table and they're waiting on the check that Clarke cracks and asks- “What are we doing today?”

Her mother grins. “I got us matinee tickets to a show Wells mentioned you might want to see.” It's said lightly, too lightly, and knowing her mother and her money...

“Mom.”

“So, how do you feel about accompanying me to go see Hamilton?”

“You _didn't._ Oh my God, that must have cost a fortune!” But Clarke's beaming, and _oh,_ Bellamy is going to be so jealous when she tells him; she wonders if he knew. She can't believe it, because even though she knew her mother would do something big, this is a lot. Her mother has taken over her dad's tradition enthusiastically, but her gifts have still always been more practical than his were- this is a serious expense.

Clarke's giddy all the way to the theater, half terrified she'll wake up and realize she's been in someone else's dream. Except she knows she's _not_ , not unless her mother is dreaming about Clarke's birthday. Abby had made arrangements for her and Clarke to be let into the theater a little early, due to Clarke's injury making it difficult for her to stand in line, and Clarke can't help but wonder what strings had to be pulled to make that happen.

Their seats are Orchestra level, five rows back, dead center. Clarke can only imagine how much that must have cost, but she doubts Abby Griffin has ever seen a show from anywhere but exactly there. It's only once the theater starts filling up around them that Clarke realizes there's a suspiciously single empty seat to her right.

“Hey, Princess.” And there's Bellamy, sliding in to take that seat.

“You're _here_ ,” she says dumbly. “How are you-” she looks to her mother, who is carefully perusing her playbill, but with a smug smile on her lips.

“I basically owe your mom my firstborn,” Bellamy jokes, but she can tell he's a little overwhelmed. She _knows_ Bellamy isn't great at accepting gifts, and she has to wonder what on Earth her mother said to him to get him here, but she's glad she did. She loves her mom, she's happy to get to share this with her, but for this particular activity, Bellamy would be her first pick.

“She'd already bought the tickets by the time she told me about it,” he explains a little quieter to her as the lights go down. Of course she did. If she hadn't, Clarke doubts there's anything her mother could have said to get him here.

Hamilton is as fantastic as Clarke knew it would be, but what makes it even better is being able to sneak occasional glances at Bellamy's awed expression. He's enraptured, an almost childlike wonder on his face, and Clarke can never thank her mother enough for getting to share this with him. It's like its own birthday present.

But it doesn't end there; after curtain, Abby shoos them out of their seats and toward the stage. And then there's an attendant there, shaking hands with Abby, and leading them through a door and clearly in the direction of _backstage_.

“Did you know about this?” Clarke asks, wide eyed, but when she looks back at Bellamy behind her, his expression tells her that he most certainly did not. Everything after that is a blur, but in the best way possible. Clarke's just glad her mother is taking pictures because she's not sure what happens except for that she gets to hug Michael Luwoye and Lexi Lawson and then the cast proceeds to sing her a truly exceptional rendition of _Happy Birthday_ with harmonies and everything, and by the time she and her mother and Bellamy are back outside on the sidewalk, Clarke thinks she might pass out.

“I can't believe it,” she says for what's probably the fifth or sixth time. She has an intense urge to jump up and down or spin in a circle, but neither of those things are an option so she settles for babbling a bit incoherently about everything they just went through, as if Abby and Bellamy weren't right there with her. For his part, Bellamy just seems shell shocked, like it still hasn't sunk in yet.

Abby orders a car to take them all back to Clarke's apartment for a break between birthday festivities and Clarke's glad because she feels like she needs a few moments to absorb everything. Her mother doesn't follow them up to the apartment.

“I'll see you again tomorrow,” she says, when Clarke questions how soon she's heading out- it's only late afternoon. “I thought you'd enjoy some time with just your friends.”

“Thank you so much for today, Mom.” It had been above and beyond anything Clarke had expected.

“Happy Birthday, Sweetheart,” is her mother's only response.

 

Clarke's friends take her to a rooftop bar and restaurant for dinner. Since it's January and there's snow on the ground, instead of tables, the bar has a series of clear inflated domes, heated, with sofas and chairs, interconnected by more clear tunnels. The bar offers a spectacular view of the city skyline, as well as comfortable place for Clarke to sit.

“Of course, we thought you'd be drinking when we made reservations,” Wells says sadly.

“It doesn't matter, it's great,” Clarke tells him, and it is. The food is spectacular, and the view is hard to beat, and she has all her best friends with her- Wells, Bellamy, Raven, Monty, Miller, and Harper. Even Lincoln and Octavia stop by to wish her happy birthday, though they don't stay long, and Clarke notices Bellamy avoids them when they arrive. He hadn't mentioned fighting with Octavia, but he never much has, and even though she knows that Octavia was a difficult and temperamental teenager, he's never gone into specifics of what that means.

Eventually Raven stands up on one of the sofas and yells at everyone to be quiet. They've been there long enough that most of Clarke's friends are a little tipsy but not yet drunk. Bellamy isn't drinking, and while he hadn't said anything about it, Clarke's quite sure it's a show of solidarity.

“Okay, okay, it's present time!” Raven yells. “And _this_ year, we decided to collectively pool our resources and get you something really good. Also, this is a special occasion because you scared the hell out of all of us, and we want you to know how much we love you, but don't expect this every year because you're not _that_ special, Clarke.” Raven wobbles a bit on the couch and Wells reaches out a hand to steady her. She leans into for an instant before straightening up and away.

“ _So_ ,” Raven produces an envelope from inside her jacket pocket and passes it to Wells who passes it Clarke. Inside is a card that's covered in so much glitter that it immediately sticks to Clarke's fingers and sprinkles into her lap. She's a little nervous, because whatever it is they've spent their money on, apparently it's _a lot_.

She opens the card. There are little handwritten notes from all her friends inside, but that's hard to focus on when she sees that there are two plane tickets to Croatia nestled in the card.

“It's all expenses paid, for one week,” Raven explains, “a little after classes end for the summer, so hopefully your leg will be feeling a lot better by then. And you can take whoever you want. We won't even make you decide tonight.”

She really does try not to cry, but it's a complete failure. She doesn't know whose idea it was- Raven, Wells, Monty, and Bellamy all know about what Croatia would mean to her, but it hardly matters, because they'd all worked this out together, and it's an absurdly thoughtful and expensive present and Clarke's not sure she deserves it.

“Thank you, you guys are the best,” she manages.

“We know,” Raven says, flippant. “And remember I'm your favorite when you decide who take on vacation,” she adds, but the way her eyes flick over to Bellamy tells Clarke that Raven thinks she knows _exactly_ who will be going with her.

* * *

 

 

That night, Bellamy dreams them into a glowing forest. It's strange and beautiful, like something out of a movie, luminescent plants and flowers, and Clarke wanders through the trees in awe, fingers brushing across petals that glow pink and leaves that glow blue. And when she turns around in a slow circle, taking everything in, the colors blur together, making everything soft and Clarke a little dizzy. It's messier than a lot of Bellamy's dreams, the colors and shapes bleeding together, where he's usually so precise.

Bellamy stops her spinning with a hand to her back, and it pulls her into his orbit, drawn to him as if by gravity. The world shrinks to just them; everything else is a soft, glowing blur, and here he is, solid, and warm, and everything. Bellamy's so close, his curls tickling her forehead.

“You know I love you, right?” he murmurs quietly.

“Yes.” She touches his cheek, brushing across the freckles scattered there. He moves closer, his forehead dipping to meet hers, noses nearly brushing.

“You know I'm in love with you, right?” he asks.

And she finds she does. She knows this; she's known this for a long time. But it's complicated. In his dreams he loves her, is in love with her, in the waking world...

“Yes,” she answers again.

He huffs out a small laugh, and she can feel it flutter across her lips. “But you haven't figured out how to feel about that yet,” he supplies. He doesn't sound upset, just soft, so unbearably soft. He's wrong.

“No, I know how to feel about it, I just don't know how to-” It's so terribly complicated. And yet, she knows how to make it simple. It starts with the truth. That's so much easier said than done. There are tears of frustration pricking at the corners of her eyes because she _wants_ , she wants to just let this be what he wants here. But dream Bellamy is only a piece of the man, not the whole, and he deserves to know it all, before he decides how he feels about her.

“Princess,” his voice is warm and so fond it nearly aches with it, “take your time,” he says, sure. She doesn't know how it's so easy for him, but then, maybe that's because he doesn't _know_. And then she can't think about anything at all, because Bellamy has leaned in, just that small distance between them, and his lips are warm on her cheek, gentle. And for that moment, everything is as simple for her as it is for him, an innocent, longing, kiss, pressed to skin instead of lips. But then he's stepping back, out of her grasp, and she knows it's all up to her now.

 

She catches Wells sneaking back into the apartment early the next morning, and he freezes, eyes wide, when he sees her standing in the kitchen, but Clarke just rolls her eyes at him and goes back to pouring herself a cup of coffee. She knows exactly where Wells spent the night, but if they aren't ready to talk about it yet, Clarke supposes she'll have to just let her friends pretend it's not happening. And to his credit, Wells hasn't said anything about Bellamy, so Clarke figures they're even.

Abby takes her and Wells to lunch, then Wells to the airport, before she goes back to Connecticut. It's a short visit all the way around, but her birthday had been so incredible that Clarke can't imagine it being better. Clarke's physically exhausted from her weekend, and she spends most of the next week in bed. She's taking all online courses this semester, to make things easier on her recovery, but Bellamy's not so lucky and with the semester getting back into full swing, she begins to see less of him during the week than she would like.

He's always there for her physical therapy sessions, and he spends the majority of the weekend in her apartment, even if he does always seem to have a massive pile of tests and papers to grade. She misses him when he's gone, but she thinks maybe some distance is good. She needs to get her head on straight and figure out exactly how to approach telling him about her dream jumping. The longer she waits, the harder it is to imagine doing it at all. Things are so _good_ how they are, but then she catches the longing way Bellamy looks at her in his dreams and she knows she's not being fair to either of them.

The day that she sees the first real life bruise on Bellamy's skin is the day Clarke can no longer deny her suspicions. It's a Friday, the first in February, and she hasn't seen him since her last physical therapy session because he'd had a test to study for and then he'd promised Octavia he'd help her build some shelves for her apartment.

He seems fine when he arrives, offers to make dinner, and it's only when he reaches up to the highest cabinet to pull down Clarke's salad spinner that his shirt lifts and Clarke catches a glimpse of expansive purple bruising.

“What happened?” she asks at once, concerned, because yes, she's seen him like this in his dreams, but it's never seemed to translate to the real world. She'd always thought it was emotional bruising, showing on his skin in his dream world, and that's bad in its own way, but she never expected to see anything like this.

“Nothing, it's fine,” Bellamy answers quickly, when he realizes what she means, and tugs his shirt down to make sure none of the bruising is showing.

“That's not fine, that looked terrible.”

“Says the girl with the broken femur,” Bellamy jokes. “It's no big deal, Clarke. I slipped on some ice on the way home from class and fell. It'll heal up soon.” But Clarke has known Bellamy long enough to know when he's lying, because she's rarely seen it from him. This is the exact same Bellamy who won't tell her about the bruises in his dreams. And that means there's something to hide and terribly, unthinkably, Clarke's noticed a pattern. When Bellamy is bruised in the dreams, it always correlates to time he's spent alone with his sister.

But Clarke's suspicions are just that, and if she's going to get _anywhere_ with him about it, she expects it will be in his dreams, where he at least has stopped lying about where the bruises came from. He just won't say anything at all. And yet, it feels wrong to even try to get through to him there, just another thing for him to be upset about when he learns the truth. And he will. She has a plan now, to tell him during Spring Break, where if he's upset it won't mess with his work or classes, and when Raven will have free time for Clarke to go crying to if it all ends up terribly and Bellamy hates her. She doesn't know what she'll do if he hates her.

Clarke attends her first trivia night post accident the second week of February, and it feels good to be back. She's up to nearly 10 steps without her crutches now in physical therapy, and while that doesn't change how difficult it is to get around the city much, she can now walk very short distances in her apartment without the crutches, and it feels like time to celebrate. It's harder to keep her balance on the subway, but people are also a lot quicker to give up their seat to her than she actually expected, so it hasn't been too terrible. She's not sure what she'd do if she had to stand the entire subway ride to Raven's neighborhood since it takes over forty five minutes on a good day, and well over an hour when the trains are running delayed, which is more and more often these days. Complaining about the MTA is probably some sort of rite of passage for New Yorker's, but it gets old pretty quickly.

Trivia goes well; now that she and Bellamy are working together without bickering, they dominate. Raven and Monty might be the two smartest people in their friend group, but Bellamy and Clarke are the most competitive and the most likely to remember random trivia, which makes this _perfect_ for them. They easily trounce the rest of the competition, which basically means they get a $25 gift card to Macy's and bragging rights for the week, but Clarke's still proud.

She hasn't seen the bruises on dream Bellamy at all since the night she saw _real_ ones on very real Bellamy, so it comes as a little bit of a shock when falls into his dream on Saturday and he's positively battered. Bellamy isn't at her apartment, hasn't slept there since Wednesday's trivia, and she's suddenly terrified this is what he looks like for real, because the Bellamy that greets her has a split lip and a bloody nose and is clutching his arm oddly, and this is _so much worse_ than she's ever seen him.

Clarke rushes to him, ignoring the way the earth, which is soft and muddy, sucks at her shoes and tries to keep her away. It's the only part of her surroundings she even takes note of, outside, muddy ground, gray sky, because Bellamy's standing just a few feet away, looking lost and utterly broken.

When she reaches him, he just looks at her with vacant eyes. “Bellamy?”

“I don't know what happened.” His voice is distant, detached. It's like he's not quite there with her. She wants to reach out and touch him, but her hands hover awkwardly before her, there's no bit of skin that looks like it wouldn't hurt.

“You don't know how this happened?” she asks, but he shakes his head no.

“I know _how_ ,” he responds, still in that odd, distant voice. “I don't understand _why_.” His voice breaks on the last word, and suddenly it's not a gray sky, it's a stormy one, and they're standing in the middle of a muddy field in a thunderstorm, the wind picking up, and rain starting to come down in sheets, and them, at the center of it.

“Bellamy!” Clarke has to yell over the storm, and she automatically reaches with her mind to shape the dream, but she can't. Bellamy's dream is firmly in his own grasp and he's not letting go- he's not letting her have it. Trying to touch it is like trying to grasp smoke.

“I don't understand.” He's crying now, but it's hard to even see through all the rain.

“Tell me what's going on,” Clarke begs. “Tell me what's wrong!” Bellamy's had nightmares, but never like this.

He finally looks at her, really looks, and this is a raw, tortured part of him he's always kept behind walls. She's only seen him look close to this once, and it was the very first dream she ever saw him in, the nightmare about his mother.

“It's Octavia.” The words are choked out, like he almost can't get them up his throat and out of his mouth at all. As soon as he says them, his shoulders slump and her curls in on himself, like it's taken life out of him to say it out loud. The storm is getting worse. Clarke reaches for the dream again, but she still can't get a hold of it. The thunder is deafening.

“Let me have control of it,” Clarke yells, “Please, Bell, let me take us somewhere else.”

And all of a sudden she has it; he relinquishes the dream to her. She takes them to his library.

 

Clarke can dream up a safe space and warm dry clothes and smooth unbroken, unbruised skin for Bellamy, but she can't fix what's inside. They sit in their chairs by one of the fireplaces, hidden in the stacks, _their_ place here, for a long time in silence. His eyes don't look so far away, but his jaw is clenched tight and he keeps flexing his fingers against the arms of his chair. She doesn't know if he's going to say anything else and then-

“She doesn't actually hit me that often,” he says, quiet. “She makes a lot of threats, says a lot of terrible things. She only hits me when she's really upset.”

Clarke doesn't know what she's supposed to say to that, because in her eyes that doesn't make it any better. She should have thought more about this, about what she'd say if he ever confided in her, instead of just trying to figure out if she was right, if he would ever tell her in the first place. Now that she _knows_ she's right, that Bellamy's bruises are a product of his sister's temper, she doesn't know what she's supposed to do next.

“It started when she was seventeen, and I just thought... she'd grow out of it, right? She had good reasons to resent me. I wasn't her parent, but I had to try to be, and I wasn't always good at it. She was just a kid, she deserved more than me, you know?”

But no, because even if he's right, _he_ deserved more too. He was just a kid himself, when their mom died and he was left with Octavia to take care of. Bellamy had told her, both in the dreams and in the real world that their legal guardian hadn't had a lot to do with them, but the relationship must have been even more distant than she'd thought if Octavia had started hitting Bellamy while still under her roof. Or maybe, a terrible voice in Clarke's mind whispers, she just didn't care. Maybe she just wanted them out of her way and as long as Octavia wasn't hitting _her_ it didn't matter.

“I don't even know what it's about, sometimes,” he continues. “Maybe it's just force of habit. She's angry, I'm there.” He shrugs helplessly and Clarke's heart feels like it's in a million pieces because Bellamy is good and kind and thoughtful and this is what he gets in return. And she'll have to go back to a world where she knows the truth and can't say it.

“I just wish I knew why,” he finishes. He looks haunted, and she can see him slipping away from it all again, a blankness creeping into his eyes.

Clarke reaches for him then, slow, and he doesn't flinch away when her hand finds his. “Whatever the reason, it's not your fault.” It's the only thing she can think of to say, something she _needs_ him to know. “It's _never_ your fault, Bellamy.”

His fingers tighten slightly on her hand, but he's not looking at her again. “I still wish she'd tell me why.” It's the last thing he says for the rest of the dream, but he never lets go of her hand.

 

She calls Bellamy immediately after she's woken up. She doesn't know what happened between him and Octavia the night before, doesn't know how much of what she saw in the dream reflects his physical state in real life, but regardless, she knows he's not okay. He doesn't answer.

It's not _easy_ to take the subway with her crutches, but she's done it some. This is her first time doing it alone, but her apartment is close to the station and she can take the R directly to Steinway Street and be at Bellamy's in thirty to forty five minutes, so she's just _doing it_. She gets to sit most of the way, but by the time she's navigating her way out of the Steinway Street station, her leg is aching pretty badly. At the moment, she doesn't care.

Clarke rings the bell twice before she gets buzzed in, and when she gets to Bellamy's door, Miller is the one who answers.

“Hey, Clarke?”

“Where's Bellamy?” she demands, too worried to bother to say hello. She must sound angry, rather than concerned, because Miller raises her hands in surrender.

“In his room, I think. I'm just... gonna head out for a while.” And with that, he flees.

Clarke knocks on Bellamy's bedroom door, and when he doesn't answer, she bangs on it instead. She didn't trek all the way over here on crutches not to find out how badly hurt he is.

He finally answers the door, hair wild, and moving tenderly. “Clarke? What are you doing here?”

“You didn't answer your phone.”

“I- and you came over here? Jesus, Clarke, your leg.” He reaches out with one hand as if to touch her, but instead visibly winces, and it's enough to confirm Clarke's fears.

“I'm fine,” she waves him off, “but you're not- Bellamy, you're moving worse than you did after the car accident and you're not answering your phone? What the hell happened?”

She watches the way his face closes off at the words, and she can't stand it, absolutely can't handle the fact that he's living with this secret and has been for God only knows how long.

“Everything's fine, Clarke.”

“No, it's not. I _know_ it's not,” she tries, and she feels out of control, helpless and angry and she needs to _do something_. She can't just walk away from this, from the terrible knowledge that's thundering in her chest. And she knows why he's stayed away for the past couple of days, because if he'd come to her place like this, there's no way she ever would have missed it, and she wonders how many times he's done something like that in the past, avoided the people who might notice something's wrong to protect his sister.

Bellamy crosses his arms. “How could you possibly know that?” It's the condescending tone paired with the way he flinches as he does so, another attempt to cover it all up, that gets to her. Because this is so _unfair_ and _wrong_ and he may have figured out a way to justify it to himself, to survive and bear it, but Clarke hasn't, won't, and then she's yelling, all thought gone except she can't accept this.

“Because I know that your sister is hitting you and there's nothing that can make that _fine_!” Clarke bursts out. It's sheerly impulsive, probably a mistake, but nothing could stop it at this point.

Bellamy freezes, and Clarke realizes what she's just said, too late. It's not just a minor slip up this time- it's a huge one. She can pass off little bits of knowledge of him as secondhand, but not this. This is something dark and deeply private, something he's worked hard to protect.

“How do you know about that?” Bellamy's voice is quiet, but there's roiling storm just underneath it.

“I-” Clarke's searching wildly for an explanation, but there isn't one. Not one other than the truth.

“ _How do you know about that?_ ” Bellamy repeats, his voice raising a little more.

“Someone- Miller-”

“Miller doesn't know about that,” Bellamy snaps. “No one fucking knows about that. Octavia wouldn't have told you, not like all that other crap you've tried to cover using her. So fucking _tell_ me, Clarke. How do you know all the shit you know about me? How do you know the one thing I would _never_ have told anyone.”

“Because you did,” Clarke says softly, giving in. There's no other way out of this. “You did tell me, you just don't remember.”

Bellamy's glare remains hard, unforgiving.

“I- you know how sometimes siblings can end up in each other's dreams?” She doesn't know how else to start this. This was never how it was supposed to come out and now she's floundering. It sounds absurd. She assumes he's aware of the phenomenon, even though it isn't common.

“What about it? If you're trying to tell me-”

“I do that,” Clarke interrupts him. “I do that, but it's with everyone. Anyone who happens to be around.”

“So you're saying you've learned all that from my _dreams_?” Bellamy asks. The way he spits it at her like an accusation is exactly what she's been afraid of this whole time. And she can't even blame him; she's made a mess of things.

“It started when I was fourteen.” If she's going to tell him, she might as well tell him all of it. He's already going to hate her for it, for finding out this way instead of her telling him the way he deserves. She doesn't know what else to say.

“You've been in people's dreams since you were _fourteen_?”

“No,” Clarke shakes her head. Her hands are trembling against the grips of her crutches. “I've always been in people's dreams. That's been my whole life. I was talking about you. I've been in _your_ dreams since I was fourteen.”

It seems to knock some of the anger out him, replacing it with pure disbelief. “But... That's not possible. We didn't know each other. You didn't even live in New York. We'd never-”

“That night I picked you up at the bar,” Clarke interrupts, because she has to get this out. She needs him to hear it all. “When you were so drunk, I asked you why you hated me so much. I don't know if you still remember that. And you said that I looked at you like I knew you, and you didn't like it. And I knew why, I knew exactly why you felt like that. Because I _did_ know you then, Bell. I've known you for eight yours. You've been pretty much my favorite person for about six of them.”

She shrugs, feeling helpless, lost. He's looking at her in a way she's never seen before on him, and it makes her feel so small. “I didn't think I'd ever actually meet you. I didn't think it would matter what we said to each other in the dreams. And then I met you and you just... You didn't know me. You didn't even _like_ me. I had no idea how to navigate that. No one knows,” she adds quickly, because it's just occurred to her that by telling Bellamy, he might assume they've all known, and even if he doesn't, he could tell everyone. He might, if he hates her. “Just my mom and Wells. But I was going to tell you. I swear, and then last night-” She has to stop to swallow down the tears that are rising up in her throat. She'd been terrified, both when she'd found him like that in his dream and later, when he hadn't answered his phone. “Last night you told me that Octavia-”

“Don't.” He cuts her off. “Just... don't.” Bellamy looks confused, hurt, angry- all the things she was so afraid of. She never wanted to hurt him, and that's the worst part, more than anything else; when all this started years ago it never occurred to her that anything about the incredible relationship she and Bellamy formed in the dreams could be harmful. She'd cherished it.

“Bell,” she tries again, even though she has nothing else to say, or nothing that would make it better. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, that I let it go this far.”

He shakes his head, and there's so much just... raw feeling on his face, she almost can't look at him. He's so hurt, and so lost, and it's the last thing he needed right now.

“I need space,” Bellamy says, finally, and his voice catches in his throat. “I need... I'm going for a walk.”

“Bellamy, I-”

But he doesn't wait to hear what she has to say, and Clarke doesn't know anyway. The quiet click of the apartment door behind him is more deafening than if he had slammed it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone!
> 
> hope you've enjoyed pt. 2! sorry not sorry for leaving it there- 
> 
> EDIT: okay, I didn't notice until just now that for some reason my note got cut off. I wanted to just say thank you so much for all the wonderful comments and feedback so far & part 3 is fully drafted, but needs a little more editing than part 1 and 2, so it should be up in a few days. love you guys!
> 
> Erin


	3. Chapter 3

Bellamy hasn't spoken to Clarke in two weeks, not since he'd walked out of his own door and left her there; she hasn't even had so much of a glimpse of him- complete radio silence. But his dreams are a different story. He hates her in the real world, but he still loves her in his dreams. That would be so much easier if the dreams weren't the reason he hated her in the first place, because the smile he always greets her with in his dreams now drowns her in guilt. It feels like there's this gaping hole in her life where Bellamy used to be, a space he occupies that had happened so slowly and cautiously she hadn't realized how large it was until he's gone.

That first night, when Clarke had arrived in his dreams, and he'd looked up from his book, at his usual spot in his library, and his face had lit up with a smile dripping with adoration, Clarke had promptly burst into tears. His expression had shifted to fearful concern faster than she could register.

“Clarke, what's wrong?” he'd come to her, gentle hands, soft expressions, pulling her into his chest and cradling her there, like she's something cherished, like she's precious to him. She'd only cried harder, because he only loves her because he's so unaware of anything but their time spent here. If he knew, he'd hate her too. She shakes her head against his chest, because she can't talk about it, can't explain it, and it wouldn't make any sense to him anyhow.

“It's okay,” he murmurs, quiet. “Whatever it is, I'm here for you, always.” And it's so unbearably _not_ funny that she nearly laughs.

During the day, she has little to do but dwell on it. Raven's taken over her physical therapy, and in a completely uncharacteristic move, she's not asked about the change at all. Clarke had tried to object- she knows Raven's history with physical therapy is rough, but Raven had just shook her head and said, “Get in the goddamn car, Clarke.”

Clarke finds herself instagram stalking Octavia in her spare time. She feels this compulsive need to keep tabs on her, to search for something that might begin to explain her relationship with Bellamy and how it ended up where it is. Maybe Clarke's just trying to focus on something other than the mess that's between _her_ and Bellamy, but it truly nags at her, this secret about Octavia that she can't tell.

Based on Octavia's instagram, you would never know there's any sort of tension between the Blakes. She posts a lot of fitness videos, health food, and modeling shots, but there's also a shockingly large amount of Bellamy on page as well, considering his own complete lack of social media. Octavia has put up candids of him- drinking coffee in the morning, messy hair, with a book in hand, vacation photos of him and Lincoln in a canoe, a shot of him in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. There are old photos of him too, gangly and young, giving Octavia a piggyback ride; she's missing both her front teeth in the photo and grinning wide. There's one of the two of them, where Octavia can't be older than five, curled in Bellamy's lap with heavy eyelids while he reads to her from the first Harry Potter. It's hash tagged #worldsbestbigbrother and Clarke feels sick to her stomach.

It would be so much easier if their relationship wasn't so multilayered, if Clarke could believe that Octavia doesn't love him, that she's just a monster who tears him apart for the hell of it. She might be a monster, Clarke isn't sure, but it's not all she is. Even in the most recent photo of the siblings together, them both laughing, there's an adoration in the way Octavia looks at him, like a child looking at a superhero, brightly, with something like awe. But maybe that's part of the problem, Clarke thinks, because Bellamy _isn't_ some superhero, he's just a man, and holding him to the standards of an idol, expecting perfection from him, and feeling betrayal when he fails to meet that, well, that could sour any relationship.

She has an ulterior motive for spending all that time on Octavia's instagram, beyond searching for signs of the Blake's dysfunctional relationship. Being on Octavia's page allows her to see Bellamy. He doesn't have an Instagram or a Facebook or a Twitter or any of it, and this becomes Clarke's only glimpse of him during waking hours. She knows it's pathetic, but she can't help herself.

 

On Tuesday night, after therapy, Monty shows up while Clarke and Raven are lounging on the sofa watching Stranger Things; He comes bearing Clarke's favorite chocolate croissants from the absurdly expensive bakery down the street. And still, no one says a word about why Clarke's been cooped up in her apartment all week, not answering texts, not showing up for trivia. They're all acting like someone has died, and Clarke's not even sure what they know. She doesn't think Bellamy would have told them about the dream thing, and she _knows_ he wouldn't tell them about Octavia.

“I think Murphy and Emori are coming to trivia tomorrow,” Monty tells her, sounding hopeful. “Emori and Harper seem to have really hit it off.”

“I'm not going,” Clarke replies. She's just not in the mood for it. And Bellamy won't want to see her.

“Oh, bullshit,” Raven says around a mouthful of croissant. “Bellamy isn't going to be there, okay? He already canceled on us, and you two are our best team members. We can't afford to lose both of you.”

“I'm just not feeling up to it,” And it's not even a lie. She just feels worn down, like all energy and motivation has fled from her body.

“I don't get what happened,” Monty says, finally.

“Bellamy's been a fucking nightmare,” Raven chimes in. Monty nods along next to her, seemingly empowered now that he has some backup.

“Nate says he won't tell him what's going on either, and I know Nate isn't the most open with everyone, but he and Bellamy usually tell each other everything.”

“Yeah, and _you_ usually tell _me_ everything,” Raven adds. And that's mostly true. She's told Raven almost everything. But this is complicated, and she can't tell them _everything_ , not without betraying Bellamy's trust even worse than she already has.

But Raven and Monty are her friends, have been there for her over and over again, and she doesn't want to lose them like she's lost Bellamy, so maybe it's time to be a little more open.

“We had a fight,” she begins, soft.

“We sort of figured that part out,” Raven says, impatient, and Monty shoves her and mutters “shut up,” under his breath.

“You guys know about dream jumping?” Clarke's heart is beating a mile a minute. She could backtrack, change the subject. She doesn't have to explain. She's kept this secret her whole life, and the only person outside of her own family and Wells that she's told isn't speaking to her anymore. But then, it had been special circumstances with Bellamy- it always has been.

“Yeah?” Monty nods. “I had a friend in high school who did that with her twin sister.”

Clarke takes a moment, looking at her friends, at Monty's inquisitive expression and the understanding that's already starting to dawn on Raven's face.

“I've been dream jumping my whole life,” Clarke says it very fast. “And it's not limited to one person, it's just... whoever happens to be nearby.”

“And Bellamy's been here a lot of nights recently,” Raven says, the gears clearly turning in her head. “But dream jumping isn't voluntary from what I've read.”

“Have they even pinpointed what causes it yet?” Monty asks, also looking fascinated, deep in thought. It strikes Clarke then, that neither one of their reactions was to immediately wonder if she's invaded their privacy. Instead, they just look thoughtful, intrigued. Clarke doesn't realize how much she needed a reaction like this, until she can breathe again, her shoulders slumping in relief.

“None of the doctors I've seen seem to have any idea,” she says, feeling suddenly so much freer than she could imagine, but the thought of Bellamy is still a weight on her mind.

“So what's he so upset about?” Raven asks the pertinent question. She can't tell them everything, not the whole truth, because it's not hers to tell. She can't say anything about Octavia and the bruises or Bellamy's mother. But she can explain the logistics of it, why it's invasive for Bellamy in a way that it isn't for anyone else.

“Bellamy's special,” Clarke begins. She didn't realize how much she needed to tell this story until it all comes spilling out. She tells them about the first time she found herself in one of his dreams; she leaves the details out, because that dream had been personal and heartbreaking and something she knows still haunts him. She tells them about trying to find him, and then coming to the conclusion that she never would, about becoming friends with him, and about meeting him in real life for the first time. She explains why his immediate dislike of her had been so hurtful, and how she felt she couldn't tell him about the dreams in part due to tension of their relationship. She tells them everything she can without hurting Bellamy more.

“I'm not sure he's ever going to forgive me,” Clarke finishes, trying to keep her voice steady and not so emotional. Monty rests a hand on Clarke's shoulder.

“He'll forgive you.”

“You don't know that.” It doesn't matter how much Clarke wants to believe it, that doesn't make it true. And Monty hadn't seen the utter betrayal on Bellamy's face at her confession. He doesn't know what she knows.

“He will, because he's been... not good. He might be upset right now, but only because he cares.”

And Clarke wants to believe that it's true, so for now, she lets herself trust those words; she can be more realistic in the morning. They all end up falling asleep in a pile on Clarke's couch, sometime after midnight and it doesn't really surprise her when she ends up in one of Raven's dreams. And not just any dream, but one that Clarke is featured in.

In Raven's dream it's trivia night, and everyone is there, except Bellamy. Clarke drops in right as she's halfway through writing the answer to a question. Whatever information Raven's version of Clarke knew, the real one doesn't.

Raven's on her left, and she knows it's Raven's dream and not Monty's based on the tone of it, but also because when she meets Raven's eyes, something shifts-

Raven's head tilts to the side, eyes narrowing. “Is this a dream?” she asks Clarke. It stuns her. No one has ever asked her that before; no one has ever figured it out. But it shouldn't be a surprise, should it? Raven's special too, different than Bellamy, but still special- and she's got a brain that's unparalleled.

“Yes,” Clarke answers, slow. It only takes Raven a moment to process it, and then she grins and Clarke's all but forgotten as she begins to examine every detail and aspect of the dream, muttering quietly to herself under her breath, particularly fascinated by the edges of it, that keep expanding as Raven draws close, filling in more aspects of the bar. It's so like Raven, that Clarke finds herself kind of fondly amused, if not a little bored. At least she can interact, since she's a piece of this dream, so she spends the time chatting with her “friends” and doodling on Monty's arm with a pen. Raven checks in occasionally, grilling Clarke about dream rules and what can and cannot do, but for the most part, Clarke's left alone.

When Clarke wakes up the next morning, Raven's standing over her with a cup of coffee.

“Well, that was weird,” is all she says, and that seems to be it. Monty's jealous it wasn't _his_ dream, and then they both leave, but not after another attempt to talk Clarke into coming to trivia, which she still refuses. She feels better, like some of the weight has been lifted off her chest, but it's still not enough to make her want to go out. Instead she binges Parks and Rec and skypes with Wells and goes to bed early that night.

 

The first time she encounters Bellamy since that terrible day, it's an ambush set up by their friends. Raven had invited her over to play video games and make margaritas, since Clarke's down to a small enough dose of her pain medication to drink in moderation. But what she finds when Raven opens the door, is Monty and Bellamy looking up from the sofa, and her own shock reflected back on Bellamy's face. Monty looks vaguely guilty.

“Raven, what-” She doesn't even get the sentence out, before Raven is tugging her, carefully, because of the crutches, but insistently into the apartment.

“Figure it the fuck out,” is what Raven says. And then she and Monty are grabbing their things and _leaving_ them there. Alone.

Clarke stares down at her shoes, feeling shaky on her crutches. She wants to look up him, _God_ , she's wanted to see him, but not if he doesn't want to see her. Seeing him wanting nothing to do with her is worse than not seeing him at all.

She chances a glance up, finally, to find he's not looking at her, but instead focused intensely on the glass of water he has in one hand.

“Hi,” Clarke says, finally, lamely. She has no idea where his head is with this whole thing.

Bellamy meets her eyes briefly. “Hi.” His voice is flat, unemotional, and it should give nothing away, but that's not Bellamy. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Unemotional isn't in his vocabulary. If he's not giving her anything, it means he has something to hide.

“Bellamy,” Clarke's voice trembles. “I want to fix this. What can I do to fix it?”  
“You can't just fix a lie, Clarke. You have to not tell it in the first place.” There's exhaustion already creeping into his voice. He doesn't sound angry; he sounds worn out. She doesn't want to be the reason he sounds like that. She doesn't want to be a part of his story that's painful. He's going through enough with his sister, something no one else knows about, and Clarke hates that she's become one more wound for him to nurse.

“Please,” she whispers.

She watches the word reach him, a broken plea. Bellamy's expression breaks, and it's replaced by something raw and unfiltered.

“Fuck, I don't know, Clarke. I just don't know how to...” He trails off, the distress on his face achingly plain. “You have over eight years of a relationship with me that I know nothing about. How can we ever be on even footing here? You're always going to know me in a way that I can't know you.” He shrugs helplessly. Bellamy looks so badly like he wants her to have an answer, and that makes it worse. It's worse because it says that he _wants_ to fix this, and he just doesn't think there's anything either of them can do. It makes panic slither into her veins. There has to be something.

“But some part of you knows, Bell,” she says, desperate. They can't just leave things like this, can they? Both go on with their lives like the other doesn't exist, like nothing happened between them? It's unbearable to even think.“You felt it, even when we first met, you said it felt like I knew you. You even said you felt guilty being with-”

“Don't,” he interrupts. “It's just too much. I just... don't know if I can get past all this.”

Clarke is fighting a losing battle not to cry, the first of the tears spilling over. “But we were good, weren't we? The friendship we built out here, completely outside of the dreams, that's been good and that's real.”

He shakes his head. “But it's built on a lie.”

And for the first time since he found out about the dreams, Clarke feels something other than guilty and sad. She _understands_ why he's upset with her, but that's a low blow, and it makes her angry. It actually feels good, the anger thrumming through her veins, because unlike the sadness it doesn't weigh her down.

“I never lied to you, either version of you, about anything to do with us.”

Bellamy stands up. There's a little fire in his eyes now too. “Well, I don't know how I'm supposed to believe that.”

It's too much for Clarke. She can't stand here and have this conversation any longer. She heads for the door, wishing she was faster on her crutches, but stops just before going through it.

“All I ever wanted,” Clarke says, her back to Bellamy, “was for us to be close, and for you to be okay. I'm sorry that it feels like I had some ulterior motive.”

And then she goes, because she refuses to be the one left this time.

* * *

 

 

With everything that's been going on with Bellamy, Clarke focuses all her energy into her physical therapy. It's the only part of her life where she feels like she has some measure of control. The hard work pays off, because by the next week, she's been cleared to drop down to one crutch, instead of two. It feels like a big accomplishment.

“See, Griffin, that's what happens when you actually buckle down and work,” is Raven's form of congratulations.

Clarke rolls her eyes, but inside it does feel good. Having to do all her school online, and avoiding trivia has really cut into Clarke's social life, and the only time she really sees her friends is when Raven takes her physical therapy, or when she and Monty come over to watch movies with her. Clarke knows she hasn't been the best company recently, not with everything that's been going on (or rather _not_ going on) with Bellamy. In his dreams, he's still happy to see her. And maybe she should feel bad about it, but after their last conversation, she's taking what she can get. She makes sure not to cross any lines there, doesn't tell him that she loves him, doesn't let their physical contact get too intimate, but it just feels _good_ to see him light up when he sees her. It feels right, when everything else about them feels wrong.

She finds Bellamy's 20th Century Art book under her bed on a Friday, and it feels a little odd, like there's been a piece of him here this whole time without her knowing about it. She sits on the floor of her bedroom, just holding it, for nearly five minutes before she realizes he probably _really needs this back_. She assumes he'd checked a second copy out of the library or something, but considering the sticker on the back, this is a rental, not a copy he'd purchased, which means he'll need to return it.

Clarke could give the book to Monty. She's sure he'd be happy to drop it off whenever he's next at Bellamy and Miller's apartment, which is sure to be soon, but she hesitates. It's been over two weeks _again_ since she's seen Bellamy in person. And maybe it'll be as bad as it was last time, but here in her hands she has a perfectly good excuse to see him again, and flee quickly if things don't go well. It's too good of an opportunity not to take. She doesn't know where Bellamy's head is at, but she isn't ready to give up on their friendship entirely. She can't accept it's just over.

It's easier to ride the subway now that's she down to one crutch and can hold onto one of the center poles with her spare hand. It's the first time she's returning to Bellamy's place since their fight, and it's terrifying, her stomach churning and her heart in her throat. She's aware this could go very badly, worse than the last time, even. But she has to try; Bellamy deserves that from her, for her to fight for him. This line of thinking hardens her resolve. If he has to hate her forever, she'll live with it, but she can't live with him truly believing she didn't care if she hurt him.

The front door to Bellamy's apartment is propped open, and his neighbor, she presumes, a tall man with blond hair and hazel eyes, is hauling in furniture. There's an old sofa on the sidewalk outside, so a renovation, rather than someone new moving in, if Clarke had to guess. Lucky for Clarke, Bellamy's apartment is on the first floor, so she doesn't have to navigate the stairs. She's surprised to find Bellamy's door cracked open as well.

She's already pushing it the rest of the way open when she hears the yelling, and as the door swings wide, she's confronted with Bellamy and Octavia standing in the middle of the living room screaming at each other.

“-wasn't like that, O!” Bellamy is yelling, gesturing wildly. Octavia looks murderous. Neither of them notice her standing in the doorway. They're too caught up in their argument, and Clarke's afraid to interrupt, so she stands there, frozen. She catches the threads of it, something to do with Bellamy using some of the money he'd originally saved for Octavia's college on his classes, since she chose not to go. It's heated, and Clarke nearly backs right out of there, she can return the book some other time, a _better_ time, but she's rooted to the spot, a sick feeling in her chest at the anger in Octavia's eyes. She can't go, not when she knows where this could be going. And when Octavia's arm rears back, Clarke doesn't think, she just acts, hurtling across the space to put herself between them, faster than she thought she could move on her crutch.

Octavia's eyes widen in surprise, but it's too late for her to pull the punch entirely, and it catches Clarke across the jaw, a glancing blow that makes her stumble a little, catching herself before she hits the floor. She's too furious to feel the pain. She straightens up, looks Octavia in the eyes. She is nothing but rage and fire in that moment.

“Don't you fucking dare,” Clarke says coldly, and Octavia's a physically strong girl, stronger than Clarke even when Clarke isn't injured, but the utter finality of Clarke's tone must get to her, because she takes a startled step backward. Bellamy's already turning Clarke around, cupping her face in his hands, tilting her jaw toward the light.

“Clarke.” He sounds a million things at once, a riot of conflicting emotions, but the one that rises to the top is sheer horror. He's holding her like she's breakable, not even seeming to notice when Octavia takes the opportunity to slink out the front door.

“You shouldn't have done that,” he murmurs. He looks dazed, like he's not quite caught up to the situation yet.

“Yes, I should have. Someone should have done that years ago.” She looks him in the eyes, refuses to back down; it's something he deserves to hear. It's not like she's fixed the problem, only delayed Octavia's wrath, a bandaid on a gunshot wound. Bellamy breaks the eye contact, shifting uncomfortably. Her jaw hurts, but not as much as the way he's slipped back inside of himself right before her eyes.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, clearing his throat. She lets him get away with the change of subject because she honestly has no idea what else to do. Clarke's at a loss here. She wants to _help_ , she wants to make sure Octavia never hits Bellamy again, but she doesn't want to make things worse, and she has no experience with a situation like this. She'll be there for him, if he'll let her.

“I found your art history book under my bed,” Clarke motions awkwardly at her backpack. From the way his eyes flicker, she knows that _he_ knows there would have been an easier way to return it, one that wouldn't involve them being in the same room, but Clarke can't even feel uncomfortable about it, because she can never regret getting here when she did. She shrugs out of her backpack, and fishes the book out, handing it to him.

“Thanks,” he says, quiet. He goes silent, and he feels so far away. She doesn't think he's going to say anything else to her, but after a moment he does disappear into the kitchen and come back with an ice pack, handing it to her mutely. Clarke clutches it to her jaw, the cool press of it combating the heat of the blood rushing to the surface of her skin.

“Bell,” she starts, but he reaches out, puts his hand on her arm, stopping her words in their tracks. His eyes are liquid, conflicted. His hand lifts from her arm, flits up to push the ice pack away and brush across her jaw where Octavia hit her, and then he takes a step back.

“I just,” Bellamy, runs a hand through his hair. “I just need some time, okay?”

There's a part of her that wants to protest. It's been over a month. But... time means he wants to work things out, he _wants_ things to be okay again, and she can wait. She nods, swallows past the lump in her throat.

“Okay,” she says, soft. “I'm gonna go.” She manages a sad smile, and she feels his eyes on her up until the moment she closes the door, but at least this time there's a kernel of hope burning in her chest.

* * *

 

 

The anniversary of her dad's death happens to fall on a physical therapy day, and even though she apologizes profusely, Raven tells Clarke she can't stay for therapy that day.

“I'm sorry, I have this meeting with my thesis advisor, and I just couldn't get it moved,” Raven had said, and Clarke knows it's not her fault, but it doesn't stop her wishing she had someone with her this day in particular.

“It's fine, I'll take an uber,” she'd assured Raven. It's not like she really _needs_ someone there. The physical therapist, Nyko, guides most of her exercises anyway, and even though he's sometimes had Raven, or previously Bellamy, help her out with a few of the exercises, she's sure he can cover for a single session. It's not a big deal.

But therapy doesn't go well. She's distracted, her mind drifting to her dad, to the way he'd looked at the end, his face gaunt, but his humor always intact. She misses him, knows that if he were alive, nothing in the world could have kept him away from her on days like this.

This is what she's thinking about when she falls. It's her own fault, not paying attention to where she's putting her feet, but she goes down hard, crying out more in surprise than pain.

Nyko is at her side in an instant. “Okay, take it easy, Clarke,” he says, as she tries to sit up. “Wait a moment, let me make sure you haven't done any damage.”

“I'm fine,” she grits out, even though her leg is throbbing. This was just so _stupid_ of her. She's furious with herself.

Nyko makes her take it slowly, takes her through a few movements, and feels along her leg, his brow furrowed. “Okay, I don't think you've seriously re-injured yourself,” he says, looking relieved. “But I want you to go back to both crutches for the next few days. If the pain gets too bad you'll need to go in to the hospital for x-rays. You're going to have some nasty bruising, and I may have taken things a little too quickly for your recovery, and I apologize, that's my fault.”

“Wait, no!” Clarke protests. Going back to both her crutches feels like a failure. “I just wasn't paying attention. I'm fine!”

“Even so,” Nyko says evenly, “Let's just be on the safe side. We'll see how you're doing next week and if it's okay to come off the second crutch then. If you take it easy for a few days and do all you exercises at home, I don't see any reason that you won't be back down to one again next week. I think we're done for today, though.”

Clarke stews in her anger at herself as she waits for her uber. Raven had texted her, and she'd sent her brief text to tell her about the fall, trying to brush it off as unimportant, because she doesn't need Raven's sympathy for her own stupidity. Today of all days she feels foolish, angry, frustrated. It's taken her so long to even get here, and she's fucking it all up. She misses her dad. By the time she gets home, she's stiffened up from the fall and is moving slowly. It really does hurt like a bitch.

Clarke tosses her keys onto the kitchen bar, hobbles to the bathroom to pop her pain pills, and comes back to see if she has anything in her fridge to eat. Her mother had started paying for a grocery delivery service to Clarke's apartment, which had been great when Bellamy had been staying over, since he was both good at cooking, and seemed determined to keep her healthily fed, but Clarke doesn't feel like cooking, and all she has is raw ingredients.

She ends up ordering from the Thai restaurant down the street, digging out the bottle of rosé she'd been drinking the night before, and plopping down on her sofa to wait. Luckily for her, the service is fast, and it isn't long until she's buzzing in the delivery boy, infinitely grateful that she lives in a city where she can get any food she wants delivered at any time.

She queues up Netflix and settles in for a night of delicious takeout and wine and not thinking about her father as much as she possibly can. She finishes up the second season of Queer Eye while she eats, then starts the new season of iZombie, feeling pleasantly fuzzy and relaxed, full of food, and blurry enough not to be focused on her dad's death. It's exactly how she wants to feel. That's the last thing she remembers thinking before she falls asleep.

 

Clarke wakes up in the hospital, and it's so confusing that for a moment she thinks she's in someone's dream. But then Raven and Monty come into focus, huddled together on the single big chair next to her bed, and the light is too harsh, and her whole body kind of hurts.

Monty is the one who notices she's awake, before she ever says anything, sitting up straight, suddenly alert, and nudging Raven. “Clarke!”

“What happened?” she asks, because everything is fuzzy, and she doesn't know how she ended up here again.

“You had a bad reaction to mixing your pain medication with alcohol,” Monty explains.

“What? But I just had some wine, and they said I could start drinking again in small doses, and-” but she cuts herself off, because she just _hadn't thought_. She'd upped her pain medication due to the fall and hadn't factored that in. It's such a stupid, silly mistake.

“Raven asked me to go check on you because you weren't answering your phone, and when I got there you were passed out and wouldn't wake up.” He looks a little haunted by the whole thing, and Clarke feels instantly bad. She didn't mean to put her friends through this.

“I'm so sorry, it was just a stupid mistake,” Clarke apologizes.

“Yeah, it fucking was,” Raven says, finally speaking up, and that's when Clarke realizes that Raven is _mad_.

“Raven-” Clarke starts, because it suddenly occurs to her what this must be like for her friend, but Raven stands up, eyes flashing.

“You don't get to make stupid mistakes like that,” Raven says, harsh. “Not you.” And then she stalks out before Clarke can apologize again.

Monty gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “She'll calm down,” he assures her. “She just really lost it when I called her.”

“Her mom,” Clarke says, feeling terrible all over again.

Monty nods. “Yeah. It can't have been easy for her. Listen,” and he looks worried now, nervous. “I called Bellamy too. He's outside.”

“He's here?” Something flutters in Clarke's chest.

“Yeah. He wasn't sure if you'd want to see him, but he's a mess.” Monty shrugs. “And I called your mom, but there wasn't any answer so I left a message. I assume she'll be here as soon as she can. But in the meantime, do you want me to get him?”

Clarke nods mutely. Yes, of course she wants to see Bellamy. She always does. He'd asked for space, for time, but he's here now. This isn't her reaching out, it's him. Monty gives her one last fleeting smile before sliding out.

It only takes a few moments before Bellamy's looming in the doorway. He hovers at the entrance looking unsure of himself.

“Hey,” Clarke says, trying for casual, but that's kind of hard when you're in a hospital bed, strapped to heart rate monitor that definitely just kicked up a notch.

Bellamy swallows. “Hey.” He _sounds_ unsure of himself too, but he finally crosses the threshold, striding over to take the seat Monty and Raven had abandoned.

“Did you see Raven? She was upset,” Clarke asks.

Bellamy gazes at her for a moment. “We were all upset, Clarke. It was _bad_. We didn't know... what happened, if you were going to make it, anything. We just get these calls from Monty saying you wouldn't wake up. And the doctor's wouldn't tell us anything until Miller's ex, Jackson, saw us in the waiting room and got us in here. You really scared her, Clarke. All of us.” His voice is carefully controlled, bordering on neutral, Bellamy trying to hide his feelings again. He swallows hard and looks away from her.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, feeling small. She didn't mean to scare them, it was just a stupid mistake, a miscalculation, a bad day that turned out worse than expected. The silence that falls between them is heavy, almost suffocating. She almost thinks he's not going to say anything else at all, just let them drown in this silence that is _screaming_ with words unspoken.

“Tell me it wasn't on purpose.” Bellamy's voice is rough, raw. It shocks her. Do they all think that?

“It wasn't on purpose,” Clarke assures him quickly. “I fell in therapy and I forgot that when I upped my painkillers that I should be more careful with alcohol, and it was a bad day, I wanted a drink to help me relax, I didn't mean for _this_ to happen.”

Bellamy lets out a heavy breath, dragging a hand through his hair. “When I heard,” his words catch in his throat. He looks up at her; he's on the brink of tears. “I thought maybe... your problems with therapy, your dad, and me, maybe it was too many things. And you were so sad the last time I saw you.”

“It wasn't like that Bellamy,” Clarke wants to reach out and touch him, but she isn't sure if that's allowed. It's striking again, Bellamy's tendency to find blame for himself in a situation that has nothing to do with him. But she understands it more now, he's spent years internalizing the wild accusations and verbal abuse Octavia's thrown at him, and now he does it to himself, believes himself responsible for things that could never be his fault.

“It hasn't been... you know, great, recently,” she says, lamely, “but it hasn't been like _that_. I want to get better, and finish school and go on that vacation. _This_ ,” she gestures at the herself and the hospital bed, “was just me being stupid.”

Bellamy reaches for her hand. It feels so good, so familiar, to be touching him again. Her heart stutters in her chest at the contact. “I want to try to be friends again,” he says, sincere.

“You... you do?” Clarke hates how high and breathless and close to tears she sounds immediately. But if he means that, god he _has_ to mean that, then it's what she's been waiting and hoping for.

“This is the second time I thought I might lose you,” Bellamy says, soft, “And this time you'd have gone thinking I didn't care. I can't stand that. I _do_ care about you, Clarke,” his voice has a slight quiver in it. “I always did, it's just been hard... to come to terms with everything. But I wanna work on it. I wanna figure this out, even if it's hard.”

Clarke nods, too choked up to speak.

“But you gotta promise me,” Bellamy says with a wry smile, “no more scares like this one, okay, Princess?”

“I promise,” Clarke breathes, and even though she's back in the hospital, hooked up to machines again, her whole body heavy and aching, she hasn't felt this light in weeks.

* * *

 

 

It's slow, becoming friends with Bellamy again. He's cautious, which she understands. And in the gentle rebuilding of their friendship, they avoid ever talking about Octavia. She's away on modeling work, which makes it easier. They start with trivia night, both attending again for the first time the week after her hospitalization. It had taken her several days to convince her mother that she didn't need to come back and stay with her for a while.

“I have Raven and Monty and Bellamy,” Clarke had insisted, “I'll be fine.” And her mother had let it drop. She's already missed enough work due to Clarke's emergencies, and this time she really is fine.

Bellamy's no longer absent from her life, and while he's not staying at her place, not spending most of his days there, he's never far, texting to check on her, calling sometimes, and greeting her warmly, if a little tentatively when they do see each other in person. It's not like it was, but it no longer feels impossible that it ever could be.

Raven's still a little upset with her, but Monty's right, most of the anger had gone once she'd calmed down. Clarke knows she scared her, knows that it had to have been a terrible reminder of what happened to her mother, but Raven softens faster than Clarke had expected, and she suspects the skype call she'd walked in on between Raven and Wells might have something to do with it. He has a talent at bringing out Raven's softer side.

In his dreams, Bellamy seems brighter than she's seen him in a while. She doesn't know if that's a reflection of their mending relationship or the fact that Octavia's not been around, or possibly both. It's a little over a week after she and Bellamy began rekindling their friendship that everything shifts again.

She falls into one of his dreams, a library dream, and he's standing at a bookshelf, fingers trailing over the titles lazily. Clarke takes a moment to watch him, because she loves the way he is here, relaxed, happy, not weighed down by the burdens of the world. As if he senses her presence, he turns around to look at her. She doesn't know what makes her do it, but she gets a glimpse of his face, that sweet smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes whenever he sees her here, one she still hasn't seen in real life, despite all her efforts to repair their friendship-

“You're dreaming,” she blurts out. She's never told him that before, hadn't even thought to, but the words burst from her lips like they have a mind of their own. There's a ringing silence in the wake of her admission. And then... Bellamy stumbles back a step. One of his hands flies to his forehead, and he grimaces.

“I...” He looks up at her, and for the first time ever, Clarke can't tell what version of Bellamy is standing before her. “I remember... Clarke?” he says, a little lost, a little amazed.

Clarke doesn't know what to say. She doesn't know what's happened in his head- he remembers, what, exactly? Who she is in the real world? Everything? All of it?

“Bell, what-” She doesn't get a chance to finish, instead, Bellamy strides across the space between them and pulls her into a hug. Clarke is so shocked for a moment, she doesn't even hug him back. It's been so long since she's felt so close to him, and when the shock passes, she sinks into his embrace.

“Thank you,” Bellamy murmurs into her hair. Clarke clings to him tighter, because she's missed this, missed being allowed to touch him and hold him and not feel guilty in the morning, but this is every version of him, one that seems to know everything or at least _more_ , and he's cradling her close to his body, warm, and gentle, and without a sign of letting go.

When he does finally lean back to look at her, Clarke thinks he looks entirely new- not dream Bellamy, not waking Bellamy, but someone else entirely. It's a good look on him.

“Tell me what you remember,” Clarke requests. And he does.

 

When Clarke wakes up in the morning, she has a text from Bellamy that says, _Can we talk? Meet at The Grey Dog at 2?_

This is real test, Clarke thinks, as she types out an affirmative response, because she doesn't know how much he remembers when he's awake, but it's clearly _something._ His dream self had remembered it all, she'd discovered, but it hadn't been as much. After all, dream Bellamy was already aware of eight years and then some of their relationship, it's just been the last few months he hadn't been caught up on. Bellamy in the real world... Well, that's a lot more.

She gets nothing done all morning. It's hard to, with her coffee date with Bellamy hanging over her head. How will he be? Distant and overwhelmed? Friendly but tentative? Warm like the dreams? Nothing is separate anymore and she doesn't know how to feel about that. She'd known how to navigate dream Bellamy and waking Bellamy, but those rules no longer apply. Where does that leave them?

Clarke cleans her room, does a load of laundry, and even chops some vegetables to pass the time, too nervous to sit still. She's back down to one crutch, just like Nyko had promised, but still annoyed at her setback. All she wants is to be able to walk on her own two feet again for more than a few steps. She's determined to be rid of the crutch by the time her vacation to Croatia comes up, which is just under two months from now.

She still hasn't decided who to take with her. She'd intended to ask Bellamy, before everything went to shit. But now it feels like moving things too fast. It's a lot, and they're only just now getting back into their friendship, much less being at a place to vacation together. Clarke knows she could take Raven and they'd have a great time, but something it stopping her from making any solid plans. She can't help but pin some hopes on Bellamy, on something changing.

She's so focused on _not thinking_ about the looming meeting with Bellamy that she's almost late. When she hobbles in the door, he's already there, sipping a coffee at one of the tiny tables, nose buried in a book. It's so quintessentially Bellamy, that she finds herself smiling, and is still smiling when he looks up and meets her eyes.

“Hi,” she says a little breathlessly as she reaches his table.

“Hi,” he looks nearly as nervous as she feels, and that helps. “You should sit, I'll get you something, what do you want?” he says all this very fast.

“Um.” Clarke lowers herself unsteadily into the chair, propping her crutch up against the wall. “Just a latte? Thanks.” Standing in lines is difficult for her still.

“No problem,” Bellamy says, already heading for the counter to order. Clarke takes deep calming breaths while he's gone. He doesn't seem upset, or distant, or any of the things she'd worried about. Overwhelmed, maybe, nervous, definitely. But she can handle those emotions. She can't handle him cutting her out again.

He comes back with her latte, setting it carefully in front of her, before returning to his seat. Neither of them speak for a minute, Bellamy's knee bouncing nervously a little under the table.

“So...” he says, finally, “last night...” It strikes Clarke, then, that this sounds like a conversation they should have had after that night in the bar hallway, and yet it's something entirely different, and she has to tamp down a laugh at the absurdity of all this.

“You remember it?” Clarke ventures carefully.

Bellamy runs a hand through his hair, and he does certainly look overwhelmed now. “I remember a lot of things. It's... eight years, it's a lot. And I don't know if it's all of it because it's just _so much_. I'm not even sure how to process...” he trails off, looking to her for help.

“I've never done this before,” Clarke tells him, “so I'm not sure how to. But, um... you can ask me whatever you want about it. I didn't know that telling you that you were dreaming would cause this, so I'm sorry if it's too much.”

“No,” Bellamy shakes his head, suddenly very serious. “It's good. I want to know. It's going to take some sorting through, but I'm glad I know. I don't feel so far behind anymore. I just... I might need some help piecing things together?” He looks almost afraid to ask, but to Clarke it's a relief. He's asking for more of her, not less.

“Okay, you want to start now?” Clarke takes a sip of her coffee. “I'm ready whenever you are.”

The smile that creeps across Bellamy's face, slow, like a sunrise or a flower blooming, is the best answer she could possibly get back.

 

It becomes almost like a game for them, Bellamy asking Clarke random questions about things he remembers, but can't quite place. There's a lot of it, though it mostly has to do with his more fantastical dreams. He seems to have a pretty good grasp on the more intimate things they've said to each other, and he doesn't stray into that territory often.

They also experiment. While Bellamy remembers everything now when he's awake, his dream self never does until she tells him he's dreaming. And if she _doesn't_ tell him he's dreaming, waking Bellamy won't remember the dream or anything that happened in it until after the next time she's able to tell him he's dreaming. Clarke has no idea why it works that way, but as long as she remembers to tell him that he's dreaming, Bellamy can experience everything with her with all his memories intact. It's brought them closer, exploring the dreams.

Everyone just seems relieved that Bellamy and Clarke are on friendly terms again. It had put a certain strain on their friend group, though Clarke had been a little busy feeling sorry for herself to notice that much. They're back to being the winning team at trivia night, which mostly means they get restaurant gift cards, but hey, Clarke never turns down free food.

Raven seems suspiciously upbeat throughout the third week of April, and even though Clarke asks her about it, she brushes it off as getting a good review on the progress of her final project in her electrical engineering class, as if Raven ever gets anything but good feedback from her professors. The real reason behind Raven's mood arrives unexpectedly on Friday night, sweeping into their usual bar near Raven's place with that smile of his that warms Clarke down to her bones.

“Wells?”

He waves, looking a bit pleased with himself, and takes the seat next to Raven, who is the only one who doesn't look surprised. Clarke turns an accusatory gaze on her.

“You knew about this!”

Raven shrugs, but her eyes are lit up in a way that Clarke rarely sees.

“What are you doing here?” Clarke demands of Wells because no one else seems to be saying anything, but then, he is _her_ oldest friend, not theirs. Most of them had gotten to know Wells a bit during Clarke's birthday, but not like Clarke does.

Wells looks to Raven, as if asking her permission, and Clarke catches the smallest of nods. “Okay, now don't yell at me for not telling you sooner, but I'm transferring to Columbia for the rest of my degree. So I'm in town this weekend to deal with some logistics of the move.”

“You're _what?_ ”

Wells rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. So I'm planning to make the move just after the end of this school year. I would have told you sooner but-”

“I asked him not to,” Raven interrupts, chin up, a little defensive, like she's worried Clarke's going to be mad at her. As if Clarke could ever be mad about one of her best friends moving to NYC, no matter how last notice. “Because we hadn't worked out if he was going to move in with me or not yet.”

“And?” Clarke asks, because of course it would all come out like this, after everything, not actually _saying_ their together, but taking some big relationship step.

“And I am,” Wells answers. “And I would have told you about it, about us,” he adds quickly, “but we weren't putting labels on anything and...” he shrugs, looking guilty. Clarke couldn't care less, but she's honestly shocked he managed to keep it a secret. Wells would never intentionally tell anyone anything he's been asked to keep to himself, but his face is an open book.

“It's not like I didn't know,” she tells them, rolling her eyes. “You were terrible at hiding it.”

“I just didn't want you to end up in the middle of it if it didn't work out,” Raven explains, sounding a little less defensive than she had before.

“What she means is she didn't think it would work out.” But there's nothing bitter about Wells' voice. The words are said with only fondness and a little amusement.

“Starting a relationship long distance is a _terrible_ idea,” Raven shoots back.

“Wait, so it's a relationship?” Clarke asks. “I'm allowed to call it a relationship? I'm allowed to say 'hey, this is my friend Wells and girlfriend Raven,' now?”

“No,” Raven snaps, “You're allowed to say 'this is my glorious best friend Raven and her boyfriend Wells,' and never the other way around.”

Next to her, Bellamy snorts, and it's only then that Clarke becomes aware that all other conversation around the table has stopped, their friends opting to watch this whole thing between her, Wells, and Raven play out.

“Look,” Clarke says, holding her hands up in surrender, “I'm just glad I don't have to pretend I don't know what's going on anymore, it's been exhausting. _Now_ , which one of you assholes who doesn't need a crutch to walk is gonna go get another pitcher of beer?”

Monty volunteers, and slips off toward the bar, while the rest of the group goes back to talking amongst themselves, but Bellamy rests a hand on Clarke's back to get her attention.

“Is it okay for you to be drinking?” he asks, voice low, the concern wavering in his eyes.

“It's fine,” she reassures him, “I haven't taken any pain medication in almost a week, and I'm only planning on having two beers anyway.”

He nods, and his hand drops from her back. She misses the warmth, but it stays glowing in her chest, because it's Bellamy's instinct to look out for her, to take care of her, again, and it feels so much like before, but better, because he knows everything, no secrets hanging between them.

Monty arrives with the pitcher of beer, refilling all the mugs on the table, then proposing a toast to Wells' transfer. Clarke raises her glass, grinning from ear to ear, and for a few moments, everything feels right in the world.

 

Octavia gets back into town the next weekend and Bellamy starts ducking Clarke's calls. It makes her nervous. He'll answer texts, but only with vague, distracted replies, and he doesn't pick up, even if she calls moments later. She doesn't want to nag, or drive him away. Out of everything that's passed between them, this is the topic she is the most unsure how to handle. They haven't talked about it; Clarke's been letting Bellamy lead their conversations about the dreams and the things she's learned about him there, and those conversations stay far, far away from Octavia.

Clarke wants to call Miller, just to check on him, but she knows she can't because Miller doesn't know anything about the abuse, and Bellamy might truly never forgive her if Clarke accidentally draws his attention to it. She worries he's ashamed, that he sees it as his fault, because Clarke knows that's common of abuse victims. And she's seen that in him, that he seems to always blame himself for irrational things, and she doesn't know how to convince him that its not his fault when he won't even speak to her.

Bellamy finally calls her briefly on Sunday afternoon, to tell her that he's organized with Raven to take back over Clarke's physical therapy. It is _not_ the conversation Clarke feels like they need to be having, but she's just so relieved to hear his voice that she doesn't want to say anything that might cause him to clam back up. It's something they're going to have to deal with, eventually, but Clarke's terrified of losing him again. She can try to talk to him when she sees him in person, when he can't just leave her and disappear back inside of himself.

“I think it's been tough for Raven,” Bellamy says, “being at the PT appointments. Wells didn't actually _say_ , but it sounded like he was trying to work through some of that with her.”

“I don't know why she lets him in like that,” Clarke responds, thoughtful, “but I'm glad she does. She needs that. I guess everyone kind of needs that.” Clarke loves Raven, but even now she rarely gets past her confident, brilliant exterior to see what's underneath. And maybe that's because she and Clarke recognize that about each other, a discomfort with being too exposed and vulnerable, and they work so well together because they don't ask that from each other too often, only when it's critical. But Wells... He was the first person outside of her parents to get past Clarke's walls, it shouldn't surprise her he's been that for Raven too- it's just something he's good at.

“Yeah,” Bellamy sounds suddenly distant, uncertain. She wants so badly to ask him about Octavia, about where his relationship with his sister stands and if he's okay and a million other things, but she keeps her mouth shut. Clarke speaking out of uncontrolled emotion was how she hurt him, and she doesn't want to do that again.

“Anyway, I have to go, I'm about to make dinner,” his voice is stronger now, like he's shaking off whatever had given him pause. “I'll see you on Tuesday, okay?”

“See you on Tuesday,” she echoes, but the conversation leaves her feeling unsettled. Tuesday feels too far away.

 

She's woken up by someone knocking on her door at two in the morning. It's weird, a little disconcerting, but her building has security, and whoever it is wouldn't have been able to get in unless the guard recognized them. When she opens the door, Bellamy's on the other side, hands shoved in his pockets, staring at his shoes. He looks up at her, and that's when she sees his black eye. The bruise is fresh, red and swollen.

“Bellamy,” she breathes. It's like her stomach has leapt into her throat, the evidence of his sister's anger fresh on his skin. She finds herself reaching for him, and he comes to her easily, letting her fold him into her arms, and it's somehow like he's smaller than usual, because he just crumbles against her.

She takes him to her bedroom, and the space feels suddenly more recognizable now that he's back in it. Bellamy curled in her bed is familiar, but the open vulnerability emanating from him is not. He looks wrecked, and in a way she hasn't ever seen before, not even in the dream he'd confessed about Octavia's abuse. Clarke considers going to get some ice for his eye, but he's cradled in her arms, trembling slightly, and she can't bring herself to leave him, even only for a few moments.

He's quiet for a long time, maybe even an hour, and Clarke doesn't try to break the silence. She doesn't know what he needs from her, but right now this seems to be the best thing she can do, just being here. Bellamy's breathing seems to normalize after some time, but his face is buried in Clarke's shoulder, his arms banded tight around her, like he just wants to disappear entirely. Eventually, Bellamy lifts his head slightly, shifting to a more comfortable position and Clarke can finally see his face.

“She always says she's sorry,” Bellamy murmurs. “She cries about it.” It makes Clarke irrationally angry, but she keeps her mouth shut, hoping he'll say more. He's still trembling a little, and he won't quite meet her eyes, his gaze sliding past her.

“I told her I don't want to see her anymore,” he says, finally, soft. “I told her she's no longer welcome in my home. She kept saying she was sorry and I just... I couldn't deal with it anymore.” There's so much pain there, so much sadness. It's a shock to Clarke, that he's taken this step. She hadn't been sure he ever would.

Clarke brushes a curl back from his forehead, carefully formulating her response. It's delicate, this situation, so easy to break.

“I'm sorry it had to come to this,” she tells him, and it's the truth because she may never have really liked Octavia, and she can't forgive her for any of this, but Bellamy loves her, and he doesn't deserve to lose her, even if it's her own fault. “I'm so sorry, Bell, but I'm so proud of you. You did the right thing, and you deserve that.”

“I know,” he breathes. “I know, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like I'm abandoning my little sister, Clarke.”

Clarke chooses her next words deliberately. “I don't know how long this has been going on. But I know you, and I know you've given her countless chances, Bell. I know you wouldn't have made that decision unless you had to.”

Bellamy's breath shudders when he lets it out. “She was getting worse,” he tells her. It feels like a confession. “She's always been... temperamental. She'd say things, even when she was young that were just... terrible, meant to inflict the deepest wounds she could, but,” he makes a slight shrugging motion. “She was just a kid who never knew her dad and whose Mom died. And she had an angry older brother who didn't know what he was doing raising her. Of course she was angry too. I just thought... She needed get it out, and words were how did that. It didn't get physical until her last year of high school.”

Clarke tightens her grip on him slightly, an unconscious action, but Bellamy returns the pressure, a silent thank you.

“And it wasn't a lot, back then. It happened a handful of times and then she graduated and turned eighteen and took off, and I barely saw her after that,” he explains. It sounds like he feels like he has to justify it, that he didn't do anything sooner, and she hates that, hates that he feels like this is in any way on him.

“Until she moved back here,” Clarke finishes.

“Until she moved back here,” he confirms. “I thought maybe it would be different. She's older, and I'm not in charge of her, and she's _happier_. She really does seem happier. Lincoln calms her down. And when he's around she's never bad. But when we're alone... she got worse instead, and I don't understand why. I thought we could work through it, that's part of the reason I didn't want anyone to know, I was so sure we could work through it but... I don't believe that anymore.” He's crying by the end, whole body trembling again. There's nothing Clarke can say to that because she believes he's right- Octavia is who she is, and Bellamy's better off without her.

He calms slowly, the tears drying up, but Clarke can still see the tracks they left down his cheeks. She wishes she were better at this, wishes she knew how to make him feel better, but she's not sure anything can. Cutting ties with his sister is brave and strong and good for him, but it's also always going to be painful and tragic to him as well. She doesn't think, no matter how far they drift apart, Bellamy will ever love his sister less.

“I'm going to get you some ice,” she tells him, once he's put himself back together a bit, and he doesn't protest when she moves out of his arms, and then out of the room. She's limping, having abandoned her crutch in the living room when he'd arrived, but she's able to make the distance to her kitchen and back without it, even if she's a little slow.

Bellamy's sitting up on the edge of the bed, feet resting on the floor, his gaze on his intertwined hands. It's the first time since he arrived on her doorstep that he's looked self conscious.

“Here,” Clarke sits down next to him on the bed, cautious now. “It'll be easier to get it to stay if you lie down.”

Bellamy takes the ice bag from her hands, meeting her eyes only briefly. “It's really late, I shouldn't have- I should probably go home.”

“Stay,” Clarke says at once. “Please. If you go home I'll just worry more. At least if you're here I'll know how you're doing.”

Bellamy hesitates for a long moment, then nods. “I can sleep on the sofa-”

“ _Stay_ ,” Clarke repeats, “Please.”

And this time he sinks back into her pillows in response, a deep sigh leaving his body. Clarke helps him position the ice pack so that he doesn't have to hold it, then lies down next to him. The room is dim, lit only by her bedside lamp, and she isn't sure if she should turn it off, but after a few moment she does so, plunging them into darkness.

Clarke's almost asleep when he next speaks, his voice drawing her out of hazy exhaustion.

“Do you think she hits Lincoln?”

Clarke considers it for a moment. Octavia's abuse of Bellamy hadn't just been physical, she knows, a lot of it had been emotional, but she's not sure he's fully accepted that yet; the physical is the most visible, the hardest to ignore.

“Maybe not yet,” she answers him, “but I think she will, eventually.”

Bellamy's voice is very quiet, very small. “Yeah, I'm afraid she will too. Is it my fault, if I don't warn him?”

“It's _never_ your fault Bellamy,” Clarke says a little louder than she intended. “Never. And it might not be something he's willing to hear, but... he's your friend, now, isn't he? If you feel like you can, I would tell him.”

He takes a long moment to reply. “I've never told anyone before. I mean, except for... you know. And that was different.”

She does know, and she knows this has been a secret he's kept so close, to protect his sister, to protect the most important person in his world, but maybe he can't protect her anymore; maybe it's time to start protecting others _from_ her, and the first person on that list is himself.

“You don't have to decide tonight,” Clarke tells him. Bellamy puts so much pressure on himself. Out of instinct, she reaches for him in the dark. He's lying on his side, facing away from her, and Clarke curls her arm over his stomach, waiting for his reaction, wondering if he'll pull away this time, now that he's more calm. Instead, he just rests his arm over hers and slots their fingers together.

They fall asleep like that, closer than they've been in weeks. And when Clarke finds herself in Bellamy's dreams, him greeting her with that eye crinkling smile, she doesn't tell him he's dreaming, and for one night she lets him build the world he wants without real life hanging over his head.

* * *

 

 

With the end of the school year fast approaching, Clarke sees less of her friends than she'd like. They keep up their weekly trivia night, but that's been reduced to the only social event of the week. Raven's locked herself up in her apartment again, perfecting her final projects. Miller seems to be camping out at Monty's, if Bellamy's texts are to be believed, and Clarke, with all her classes online, is practically glued to her laptop and spending a fortune on food delivery.

Bellamy hasn't spent the night again, but he's become more physically affectionate in the dreams, much like he used to be. Clarke doesn't want to read too much into things, but it feels like something in has shifted since spending that night curled around each other.

He hasn't said much about Octavia since then. Clarke hasn't seen her, and she doesn't think Bellamy has either, but the lack of what he says speaks loudly. Bellamy hasn't told her exactly what happened between them that caused him to break, she doesn't know what supposed insult Octavia hit him for that night, but everything is so fresh and she's not sure he'll be able to talk about it anytime soon, maybe at all. Or maybe, he'll tell her in his dreams, where everything just feels softer and safer than it does in the light of day.

The night Bellamy finishes the final edit of his thesis for the year, he dreams them onto the beach, and when Clarke finds him, he's lounging in the sun, shirtless, looking so good it's unfair. He barely blinks when she reminds him that he's dreaming; it hardly fazes him anymore, which Clarke suspects is because he no longer has to process such a large amount of information with the reminder. He sits up, grinning, looking so incredibly light, lighter than she's seen him in weeks.

“You're in a good mood,” Clarke comments.

“I'm free,” he sighs. “Three months before I have to look at that thing again, Clarke. _Three months_. No more edit notes, no more libraries, no more 'what if you tried this,'” He's glowing, brilliant and relaxed and beautiful.  
“You love libraries,” Clarke teases, “that's literally your happy place.”

“Right now, _this_ is my happy place.”

Clarke sits down next to him. “But it's _hot_ , couldn't you at least make it a better temperature?”

“Maybe you're wearing too many clothes,” Bellamy says, eyebrows raised; it's the most blatantly flirty thing he's said to her in weeks, but before she can say anything back, the temperature clearly drops to a more comfortable level.

They lay out in the sun, chatting absently, until Bellamy gets restless and lures Clarke into swimming with him. Clarke's never been the strongest swimmer and the idea of the ocean is a bit overwhelming to her. Normally when she's at the beach, she keeps it to wading in the shallows, but she's aware this is Bellamy's world, and nothing here will hurt her, which gives her the confidence to follow him out into the waves.

The water is cool, and feels good against Clarke's more sun sensitive skin. It would be just like her to end up sunburned in a dream.

“Come on, Princess!” Bellamy's already chest deep in the water, waiting for her. He's practically glowing. Clarke catches up, standing on her tiptoes by the time she reaches him.

“You're not scared of the ocean, are you?” he asks, voice teasing.

“It's _huge_ , Bellamy!” Clarke protests. “Do you know how many _things_ could be in the ocean? There are creatures that could be _right under you_ without you knowing about it!”

He laughs. “Well not this ocean, it's _my_ dream, remember?”

“That is the only reason I've agreed to this.”

“Relax, Clarke.” He splashes her a little. “It's just water.”

She splashes him back, but it's a little larger than she meant it to be and causes him to flinch and splutter, water dripping from his hair and down his face.

“Oops,” she says, not at all sorry.

Bellamy blinks at her, a mischievous grin growing on his lips.

“Don't,” Clarke warns, but he doesn't listen, and the next moment Bellamy's lunging for her, Clarke splashing desperately to get out of his way. And amidst the splashing, Bellamy gets to her and hauls her in close, off her feet. Out of instinct she wraps her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, and when she meets his eyes, they're infinitely warm. The way he's looking at her, it's like before everything fell apart. And this isn't dream Bellamy, despite it being in a dream, this both Bellamy's melded together, the one that knows every little thing.

The dream feels suddenly very slow, even the water around them, like the whole world is holding its breath, as Bellamy leans in close. The tip of his nose just brushes hers, and they stay there, turning slowly in the water, Clarke's heart threatening to burst out of her chest.

When he kisses her, he kisses her slowly, deeply, and he tastes like longing. In this world of his making, where they can call thunderstorms, raise mountains, reign as Gods and Goddesses, no moment of power sizzling at her fingertips has felt so purely of magic. It's a kiss that lingers, hope uncurling delicately in her chest as it expands, fills her to the brim with Bellamy's adoration.

When he pulls back, he doesn't go far, curling into her arms and pressing his nose into the dip under her jaw. She threads her fingers through his hair and holds him.

“You know I love you, right?” She whispers.

“Yes,” he replies, his lips brushing against her neck.

“You know I'm in love with you, right?” She asks, her voice trembling just the slightest bit at the end.

He lifts his head, looks her in the eyes.

“Yes,” he says. And then he kisses her again, and he doesn't stop until light creeping in Clarke's bedroom window pulls her up and out of the dream and back into the waking world.

 

Clarke lies awake in her bed for nearly forty five minutes after waking up from the dream with her heart in her throat. That changed things, right? They can't just pretend that didn't change things, can they? She honestly isn't sure. Should she bring it up next time she sees him? Should she text him? It's not like he didn't know what it meant. He knew it was real. But it's a place, in all of this, they've never gone. Not once in his sexy dreams, or even in their hallway encounter, had he ever kissed her. It feels, oddly, more intimate than anything else that's passed between them.

She finally forces herself out of bed, deciding to take a shower and have breakfast before reaching out to Bellamy. Maybe he'll call first. It gives him a chance to make the first move when she has no idea how. Clarke's just gotten out of the shower and into a t-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts when someone knocks on her door. She goes to answer it, her stomach twisting. There's only one person it makes sense to be this early on a Saturday. And sure enough, it's Bellamy on the other side of the door.

“Bell,” she starts, heart pounding, but she doesn't get another word out, because he crosses the threshold and kisses her. Clarke's hands go to his shoulders to keep her balance, but even so they stumble back a few steps until her back hits the hallway wall.

The kiss is bruising, desperate, different from the ones they'd shared in his dreams, driven by an urgency in the way he holds her, and Clarke leans into it. Her heart feels like it might burst out of her chest, and nothing is close enough, no matter how much he presses into her, insistent. After a few feverish moments, he pulls back.

“Dreaming it wasn't enough.”

She feels the words down to her toes, sincere, very intense, and Clarke doesn't think she can speak, so she curls her fingers into his hair and tugs him back down to kiss him again. It's slower this time, more reminiscent of the dream kiss, tender, but deep and heated. It feels like they've been waiting a hundred years for this; nothing's ever felt so right to Clarke.

Bellamy pulls back slowly this time, leaving a kiss on her cheek as he goes. “Hey,” he murmurs, and his eyes are liquid soft. He's never looked at her like this in real life.

“Hey,” she replies, slightly breathless.

“Sorry to just burst in,” he says, but he doesn't sound particularly sorry. “Can I take you out for brunch?”

Clarke nods, though her brain seems to take some time to catch up. “Yes, I just need... shoes. And um. My keys.” Bellamy grins at her, finally stepping out of her space, and Clarke takes a couple of calming breaths, trying to chase the weakness from her knees.

“Okay,” Clarke says, still out of sorts, “wait here.”

She leaves him in the living room, while she goes back to her bedroom to try to make herself presentable enough to leave the apartment. Her head is spinning, but in the best possible way, because finally, _finally_ , she and Bellamy seem to be in the same place at the same time on the same page.

They get brunch at a nearby diner, so Clarke doesn't have to walk too far, catching each others eyes and suppressing sappy grins, giddy and happy and still a little unsure how to handle yet another shift in their relationship. They never have been simple.

After, Clarke talks Bellamy into a Queer Eye marathon with her, since he hasn't seen it yet, and she is eager to get to watch his reactions. Bellamy has such an expressive face when he chooses to be open, he's practically her own personal form of entertainment. They curl together on her sofa, close but still tentative, and cry at the show until late afternoon, when Clarke switches over to Friends so that they can both stop crying every fifteen minutes.

An episode and a half in, Bellamy's fingers creep under the back of her shirt, not searching or groping, but resting warm on her lower back, skin on skin contact that sends frissons of anxious energy crackling through Clarke's veins. When he makes no further move, she takes the initiative to lean up and kiss him, brief, a question. They've been so many things to each other. Is this their new normal? She hopes so. Bellamy responds immediately, leaning into her and rolling Clarke under his body in one swift move.

The way his weight settles over her is both comforting and thrilling, Clarke still disbelieving that this is real, that Bellamy Blake who she's loved, albeit mostly distantly and hopelessly, for years is making out with her on her sofa. It sends a giddy laugh bubbling up her throat, unable to stop smiling against his lips. Bellamy kisses the tip of her nose in response, so casually affectionate it aches.

They take it slow, kissing off and on, lazily, until he gets up to make dinner when the sun starts to slant in through Clarke's windows, bathing them in golden light. Clarke watches him in the kitchen, focused on stirring the curry sauce he's making, moving through the space with a fluidity and ease that comes only from all the nights he's already spent here, doing just this. Contentment hums gently in her chest.

In this way, it's so easy, this new, blossoming thing between them; it feels right. It feels like how they should have been long ago. But it turns slightly unsure when it starts to get late, Bellamy shifting restlessly, clearly not sure how this is supposed to go, not now. Clarke knows what she wants, and she's not sure anything can be as terrifying as telling him she loves him, so she takes the plunge.

“You wanna stay tonight?” Clarke breathes, hoping. They're back on the sofa, Clarke leaning back against Bellamy's chest, with his arms around her. It's easier to ask when she doesn't have to look him in the eyes.

Bellamy hesitates. “I want to stay,” he says, kissing her cheek, then her jaw. “But if I do... I don't want us to go too fast with all this. We've kind of been all over the place.”

“So stay,” Clarke murmurs, “and we'll sleep.”

“And maybe dream,” he adds, an agreement and an endearment all at once.

“You don't have to be here for that,” Clarke reminds him, but she's smiling all the same, “but it's better when you are.” Better, because when she wakes up, she's waking up to him, and not an empty bed.

* * *

 

 

Clarke goes officially 100% crutch free and finishes her classes in the same week, which she thinks calls for something of a celebration. Nyko had reminded her to keep the crutches available, if she starts to experience pain again, but Clarke's determined to never touch those terrible things again. She's still a little slower than she used to be, still has physical therapy to get through, but being able to walk entirely on her own feels like such a gift. Bellamy bakes her a cake with chocolate frosting in congratulations and Monty and Raven come over with bottles of alcohol to “restock” her selection, now that she's finally completely off her pain medication.

None of their friends seem surprised that she and Bellamy are now... well, something. They haven't had a conversation about what it is exactly. They're together. Whatever that means. Regardless, there's a distinct lack of shock from their friends when it comes out, which happens almost immediately because she and Bellamy have a hard time keeping their hands (and lips) off each other. Despite the somewhat public displays of affection, they are taking things slowly, and haven't gotten past heavy make out sessions. Clarke's okay with it, even though she doesn't feel like she needs slow, because if Bellamy does, then she's happy to give it to him. He's probably right- it's probably best for them, with their complicated history, but Clarke trusts him completely, and she just waiting for him trust her back.

Wells arrives for his official move to the city on the third Friday of May, and everyone bands together to help get his stuff up the stairs of Raven's walk up. Or, more accurately, Miller, Monty, Bellamy, Wells, Raven, and Harper take trips hauling furniture and boxes up the stairs, but Clarke is banned from heavy lifting and put on unboxing duty, since her leg is technically still healing. A piece of her wants to protest and point out that no one is telling Raven she can't help even with her knee, but then she figures that's probably because they're too afraid to even try. And besides, it's swelteringly hot, and it doesn't take long for Clarke to come to cherish the fact that she gets to sit on Raven's living room floor taking books out of boxes, instead of hauling a new sofa up the stairs with everyone else.

By the time they're finished getting everything inside, Bellamy's worked up a sort of glistening sweat that Clarke thinks she probably finds more attractive than she should. Everyone collapses all over Raven's living room, both on the sofa and the floor, groaning about the heat and their backs, and the fact that Wells had brought a new mattress for Raven's room complete with a solid wood bed frame.

“The next one of you assholes that decides to move better not do it in May,” Miller states from where he's sprawled out nearly spread eagle on the floor as close to the window air conditioner unit as he can get.

“Do you have margarita mix and ice?” Harper asks Raven, and out of all of them, she seems the least winded. Clarke sometimes forgets that Harper kick boxes four times a week and is in absurdly good shape, but times like this remind her. Raven gestures absently at the kitchen as an indication that she's welcome to check.

“I'm ordering pizza,” Monty says, scrolling through his phone, “what types do we want?”

“We had pizza last night,” is Miller's unhelpful response.

“There's no such thing as too much pizza,” Monty brushes off his boyfriend's complaint. “Now, Hawaiian for Harper and this asshole,” he says, nudging Miller, “And a meat lovers for Raven. Clarke? Bellamy? Wells?”

“Anything,” Clarke says at the same time Bellamy mutters, “I don't care.” He's lying on the floor, his head in Clarke's lap as she sits cross legged next to the pile of books she'd been unboxing before the whole group had infiltrated the living room. He's sweaty, but adorable, and Clarke's toying with his hair, the curls catching a little on her fingers.

“Anything but anchovies,” is Wells' request.

With the air conditioner running full blast, they sit on Raven's floor to eat dinner and drink Harper's frozen margaritas to cool off. An hour and half in, Monty, Miller, and Raven end up drunk, and Clarke pulls a 1000 piece puzzle out of one of the boxes, and the three of them become determined to solve it, much to the amusement of those who remain sober.

Monty's approach is deliberate and calculated, but hilariously slow. Raven is still pretty good at putting the pieces together, even intoxicated, but Miller is a complete disaster, trying to force things to fit that obviously don't and throwing pieces across the room when he can't get them to do so.

Bellamy and Clarke leave a little after ten, slightly tipsy, but far from drunk, smiling a little wider than normal, and meandering slightly on the walk to the train. Bellamy gets a little handsy on the subway, but they're mostly alone, except for an older woman who eyes them disapprovingly when Bellamy's hands stray. He's affectionate when he drinks, tactile, seeking out the heat of skin on skin, and now that their relationship has moved past friends, that means he takes every opportunity to touch her, however currently inappropriate that may be.

“Bell,” she warns, when his fingers get a little too close to the button of her jeans. “We're in public.” The words feel like the thing she's supposed to say, but in truth, she can't quite grasp why that's such a bad thing.

“Mhm.” He is not in the least deterred, nosing at her neck, though he doesn't let his hand dip any lower, his fingers just barely toying with her waistband.

“You have a public sex kink,” Clarke accuses, mildly, a little louder than she meant to. She's doing nothing to discourage the kisses he's leaving along her jaw. Some might say she's even encouraging it, if the way she tilts her head back to give him better access is any indication. This is the most forward he's been with her, and _God_ she feels like she's waited a long time. So what if it's not the _best_ time?

“Maybe,” is his response, unbothered. The woman across the aisle coughs loudly. Laughing, Clarke finally pushes Bellamy's hands to a safer resting spot on the dip of her waist.

“Patience is a virtue,” Clarke singsongs at him, and Bellamy sighs against her cheek, but leaves his hands where Clarke placed them.

He's back to being handsy by the time they hit the front door of Clarke's building. She waves to the doorman, heat in her cheeks at the way Bellamy bundles her through the door and toward the elevator, barely sparing a glance for the security. They make out in the elevator of her building, in which they are thankfully alone, hands now wandering under clothes, and make their way, stumbling a little, into Clarke's apartment. She can't help giggling when Bellamy trips over her shoes by the door, and he retaliates by pushing her up against the wall of the hallway and kissing the laughter from her lips.

He pulls back suddenly, though he doesn't go far, his body still pressing her back against the wall. “That night at the bar,” he says, and Clarke squirms against him at the mention of it, body awash in heat. “I'd told you I'd had this dream and you... You already knew.”

Clarke looks up at him from under her lashes. “I knew.”

“Fuck,” he mutters, kissing her again. “I don't know if that's hot or embarrassing.”

“It was hot,” Clarke says, pushing him toward the bedroom.

It's not until the clothes start coming off that Clarke realizes they've never been any type of naked together. Well, that first sex dream they'd been naked, but it had been so surreal, blurry at the edges, that it's not the same. No clothes had come off in the encounter at the bar, and even the other sex dream he'd had, Clarke had woken up before it had gotten that far. It's another step in their intimacy, undressing each other, Bellamy's hands reaching for every bit of revealed skin, touching her reverently. Logically, she feels it shouldn't be that big of a deal, after everything they've been through- they've been emotionally stripped bare before each other so many times, but even so, the _reality_ of it gets to her, draws heat to her cheeks when he unclasps her bra, and makes her heart trip nervously in her chest.

It's dim in Clarke's room, but not dark, and when she's finally naked before him, she has to resist the urge to cover herself. The steadiness of his gaze makes her feel naked in more ways than one. It almost feels like a physical touch, the way his eyes trail down her body, focused and hungry, and Clarke fidgets, unable to hide her nerves any longer. He touches her then, a hand on the back of her neck, tugging her face towards his so that he can rest his forehead against hers, just breathing.

“Hey,” Bellamy whispers, and the surety and gentleness of his voice is soothing. He stays there, sharing her space, as Clarke's nerves settle, that patience she'd half lectured him about on the train showing up when it matters. Clarke kisses him once the edge has worn off, her anxiousness all but forgotten in the way he smiles against her lips. Bellamy's earlier urgency has turned languid, his kisses slow. He takes his time, fingers sliding down her neck, trailing across her collarbone so lightly that Clarke shivers and arches up into his touch until he's palming her breasts, tweaking her nipples between his fingers.

“These are perfect,” he murmurs, almost absently, against her mouth.

“Bell,” Clarke's brain seems to have short circuited and it's all she can do to pull him closer, one hand pushing at the waistband of the boxer briefs he's still wearing. He takes over, tugging them down and off, settling in the cradle of her hips as he trails kisses down her neck, to her chest, taking one nipple between his lips.

Clarke cards her fingers into his hair and holds on, pulse hammering. She wants him closer, always just a little closer. If he could sink into her skin and live there, inside of her, she'd want it. Being this close to Bellamy feels like being home.

When his mouth moves from her breasts and to her stomach, however, she tugs on his hair, trying to draw him back up, and he lifts his head to look at her, questioning. His pupils are blown wide, his lips swollen, and Clarke's never seen anything more beautiful in her life.

“Later,” she tells him, because _God_ , he's good at that, but she's waited so long for this, and she just wants the intimacy of having him inside her as soon as possible.They have time. They have so much time.

“Are you sure? I'm not going anywhere, Princess.” He looks genuinely reluctant to pass up the opportunity to go down on her, and that's something they're going to have to revisit, his proclivity for oral sex, because that's something Clarke _fully_ supports in a relationship, just not right this particular second.

“Later,” she repeats, and this time he gives in when she tugs him upward, returning to her lips, and sliding one hand down her body, between her thighs.

“Fuck,” he mutters when his fingers slide in easy, Clarke gripping his shoulders and sighing into his neck. She doesn't know why he's surprised, they've been building to this... well, forever.

“Condoms are in the nightstand,” she tells him, voice hitching a little at the curl of his fingers inside her. She has to nudge him onward, before he distracts her with his hands his teeth nipping at her shoulder, because she's done waiting. Bellamy doesn't question her this time, just rolls away from her to get one, and Clarke lies in the sheets, panting, trying to even out her heartbeat in the time that he's gone. He comes back with it already rolled on, and kisses her again, deep. It tastes like a promise.

Bellamy eases into her, slow, and Clarke appreciates the care he takes- it's been a while for her, but it's not a problem; the stretch of him filling her is satisfying, rather than uncomfortable. It's fullness, completion, in a way that nothing else is. But she wants more from him, always more.

“Okay?” Bellamy asks.

“I would be if you'd get on with it,” Clarke whines, impatient, and he laughs and kisses the tip of her nose and then finally, _finally_ , begins to move.

They find a rhythm, slower than Clarke had originally wanted, but there's an intensity to it that steals her breath. And more than anything, it's the sensation that blooms in chest with the way his fingers dig into her hips, grounding her, his lips on her cheek, the praise he murmurs in her ear. She loves him, and that emotion wells up rising to every pore in her body until she's sure she's glowing with it, shining with her love for him.

Clarke breathes his name when she comes, because there's no air left in her lungs for anything else, clinging to his shoulders and letting the feeling crash over her. And he's not far behind, the air still gone from her lungs when follows, face buried in her neck.

When her breath finally returns to her, Clarke strokes Bellamy's hair and kisses his cheek. “Hey,” she says, soft.

“Hey,” he murmurs back, his voice slightly muffled until he rolls away from her and gets up to dispose of the condom. She immediately misses his warmth, the slide of his skin against hers.

“I think the tequila is wearing off because I cannot _believe_ I thought it was a good idea to try to unbutton your pants on the subway.” Bellamy comes back to the bed and flops down, looking mildly embarrassed and unfairly beautiful with his ruffled hair and flushed cheeks.

“Three words. Public. Sex. Kink. You have a little bit of alcohol and that shows up in full force.” Clarke's fighting back laughter, sprawled on her back, languid and satisfied. Bellamy looks a little baffled by his own behavior.

“I don't know where that came from, to be honest.”

“We don't choose our kinks, Bell, they choose us.”

“You're enjoying this too much,” he mumbles into her pillow. She can see the sleepiness catching up to him, a loose laziness in his limbs.

“Go to sleep,” Clarke orders, feeling all too fond of the way the way his lashes are brushing his cheeks for longer and longer with each blink.

“Aren't you going to wish me sweet dreams?” Bellamy's voice is almost distant, he's so close to sleep.

Clarke smiles freely. “Sweet dreams,” she kisses his shoulder. “I'll see you there.”

* * *

 

 

On Sunday morning, as Bellamy's standing at her stove making french toast, Clarke nursing her much needed coffee, he casually drops into conversation that he's seen his sister.

“What? When?” Clarke asks, no longer feeling even remotely sleepy.

“She stopped by on Thursday afternoon,” he says, not meeting her eyes. He appears relaxed, but there's a tightness to his jaw that isn't normally there.

“I thought you told her she wasn't welcome anymore,” Clarke tries not to let her feelings leak into her voice. Bellamy's playing it casual, and she's trying to too, but she hates this. She _hates_ the idea of Octavia alone with Bellamy after everything. She's pretty sure he knows that, too, based on the way he's trying to play it off.

“I did.” He flips the piece of french toast in the pan. “I did, but...” Bellamy looks at her finally, and there's that lost boy that she sees whenever the topic of his sister comes up. She can see the conflict swirling in in his eyes.

“What did she want?”

“Nothing. She was just “dropping by” like nothing happened, like she didn't-” he stops talking, breathing deeply. “And I just didn't know what to do.”

 _Don't answer the door?_ Clarke wants to suggest, but she knows this conversation requires more sensitivity than her inclination. And her emotions toward Octavia aren't complicated like Bellamy's are. To Clarke, she's just the person who has abused someone she loves. Bellamy slides the final piece of french toast out of the pan and onto the plate, twisting the knob to the turn the burner off. He doesn't move from where he's standing though, his hands braced on the countertop, like that's all that's holding him up.

“I... I don't know how hard it is, Bell,” Clarke begins, tentative. “I've never had to deal with something like this, and I _hate_ that you have to, but you're worth more than letting her back into your life just because it's hard to keep her out. I don't know how to help you do that, but if you want me to, I will. I'm just not sure how not to overstep here.”

There are tears in his eyes by the time she's finished speaking and Clarke doesn't think, she just gets up from the kitchen bar and goes around the end of it to wrap her arms around him from behind, her face pressed into his back.

“I'm afraid of what she'll do,” he says, his voice breaking. “When she was fifteen, Octavia wanted to spend the night at her friend Monroe's on a school night and when I said no she broke three of her fingers in the car door, just to make me feel bad about it. She knew the best way to hurt me was to hurt herself, to make me feel like it was my fault. And _God_ , I felt terrible about it. If I'd just let her go... She does stuff like that, she knows exactly which buttons to press. And even when I know she's doing it, it still works.

“And when I got the call about you being in the hospital... I'm sorry I thought you'd do that just to hurt me, that you'd ever try to manipulate me that way. I should know you better than that; I do. It was just no one knew what had happened and my gut was telling me it had to be my fault, right? Bur it was you, not her. And now with this... If I shut her out... What if she does something drastic because I won't talk to her?”

Clarke's heart feels shredded, a weak, broken thing in her chest. “I'm just sorry you've been conditioned to think like that. God, Bellamy, I...” She doesn't know what to say, nothing she says can change his past, can make this better. She can't guarantee Octavia won't do anything, won't try to guilt Bellamy into resuming their relationship.

“And it's also...” He's trembling a little, “if I believe that she's probably not going to change, that she doesn't even want to... doesn't that mean believing that she doesn't really love me? Because how can you do that to someone you love and not really want to change it?”

Clarke's struck speechless by that, her heart constricting in her chest. She doesn't know how to answer him, how to make any of it less terrible. She doesn't know the ins and outs of Bellamy's relationship with Octavia, and Clarke doesn't know what Octavia truly wants, but she does believe she loves her brother, in some capacity or another. Does she want to change? She _should_ , but people often don't behave the way they should. Octavia should also cherish and protect him the way he always has her, but that's clearly so far from the truth. She tries to find words, anything, to say to that, but her mind is blank. She wants to promise him that Octavia does want to change, even if she can't, but Clarke doesn't know if that's true, and she knows he won't appreciate lies, even well intentioned ones.

“I know I can't let things be like they were before,” he says. He's still a little choked up, but his voice is stronger, more sure than it was before. “But I don't know how to go about that.”

Clarke steps back and tugs on his arm to turn him around because she wants to look him in the eyes for the rest of this. “We can figure it out together, if you want.”

“Yeah?” There are tears on Bellamy's cheeks, but he's no longer crying. “I don't know what she might... She could say terrible things to you, try to get in the middle of this.”

“There's nothing she could say that could do that. Her opinions on you, or us, or me don't matter to me, Bell.”

He lets out a large breath, like a weight lifting from his shoulders, then pulls her in close, just holding her. Clarke sinks into the embrace, presses herself as close as she can get, because this is what she can give him, not promises about his sister's intentions or behavior or reassurances that she'll ever change, but this, being here for him when he needs her. She hopes it's enough.

* * *

 

 

Bellamy gets offered a position on a research trip to Italy for the last three weeks of August, and Clarke's never seen him so excited. It's still over two months before he'll be going, but it sends him into a tizzy of preparation. He'd arrived at her apartment the day after securing the position with his arms full of library books. Clarke didn't even knew they allowed someone to check out so many.

“University employee privileges,” Bellamy had grinned, when she'd voiced this.

A big part of Bellamy's preparation seems to be his insistence that Clarke learns how to cook healthy meals for herself, because she has a bad habit of falling back on spaghetti and takeout when left to her own devices. It's not that Clarke _can't_ cook, she's okay at it, she's just not motivated enough to do so most of the time.

“I'm going to teach you how to grocery shop,” Bellamy declares on Tuesday morning, much earlier than Clarke would have liked. They'd spent the night at his place the night before, for the first time, because they'd been out with Monty and Miller and it had seemed silly to trek all the way back to Manhattan at 3 in the morning, when Bellamy's apartment was only a few blocks away.

“Bell, I have a grocery delivery service,” Clarke yawns, trying to burrow back into his pillow.

“Yes, but you customized it so all you end up with now are frozen pizzas and boxed macaroni and chips.”

“Because I _like_ those things,” Clarke protests, yelping when Bellamy steals the duvet from her.

“You like all the healthy stuff that I cook for you,” he points out, manhandling Clarke out of bed. She doesn't make it easy for him, trying to burrow into his chest the way she had the mattress. He's holding up most of her weight.

“But they look like so much work,” she whines. His t-shirt is soft under her fingers and against her cheek, and it smells like him- it's almost as nice as his bed.

“If you know what you're doing they're really not, which is why I'm going to teach you,” Bellamy says, easing her toward his dresser, where he's collected her clothes from wherever she flung them last night and placed them, folded carefully, on top. Clarke hates how functional he is in the morning.

“If I let go will you stay upright and get yourself dressed?”

“No promises,” Clarke mutters, but she pushes off his chest and reaches for her clothes, finally resigned to being awake.

 

They make it to the grocery store a little after nine. Clarke had insisted on breakfast and coffee, and then, once the caffeine had settled into her veins, she'd dragged Bellamy into the shower with her. When they'd emerged, Miller had been in the kitchen, and he'd leveled them with a glare.

“You do realize my bedroom and the bathroom share a wall?”

Clarke had felt some heat creep into her cheeks, but she'd been less embarrassed than she should have been- maybe Bellamy's exhibitionist streak is rubbing off on her.

Bellamy himself had only grinned. “You don't get to say shit; you and Monty had sex on the sofa, our _communal_ sofa, that our guests sit on.”

“We don't _have_ guests,” Miller had shot back, but by then, Bellamy and Clarke were halfway out the door.

At the grocery store, the overwhelmingly large Food Bazaar that's only a block and half away, Bellamy goes into what Clarke can only liken to “mom mode,” explaining to Clarke about perimeter grocery shopping, and how to tell how ripe various fruits and vegetables are. He's so eager about it, Clarke finds it oddly endearing, and doesn't even have the heart to tell him she'll never remember all of it. She thinks it's sweet, that he cares so much.

Still, when he tries to stop her from going down the cereal aisle as they're leaving (“that's all just sugar and junk, Clarke”) she'd put her foot down. He can pry her Cinnamon Toast Crunch from her cold, dead hands.

“You're hopeless,” Bellamy sighs, as she dumps three boxes of cereal into the cart. Clarke pokes him in the ribs in retaliation, and he catches her hand, pulling her close to kiss her.

It's a brief kiss, bordering on chaste, but there's something so easy and domestic about it that Clarke feels slightly dizzy when he steps back. She gets caught up in his eyes, a steady anchor point while the world turns around her.

“I love you, you know?” Clarke breathes out, not even thinking. If she had, she would have chosen a different time. She's never said that to him outside of dreams. _That's great, Clarke,_ she thinks, _tell him you love him right in front of the Froot Loops, very romantic._

But Bellamy's responding smile is brilliant, dazzling like sunlight on freshly fallen snow.

“I know.” He tugs her back in to kiss her again, slower this time.

“Bellamy?” It's like being doused with cold water, because Clarke recognizes that voice, and the way Bellamy's whole frame stiffens under her hands, Bellamy more than recognizes it. When he pulls back to face the intruder, Clarke keeps hold of his hand.

“O.” Bellamy's voice is carefully neutral. Clarke hasn't seen Octavia since she stumbled across the Blake family fight, but she looks the same, as casually beautiful as ever. But what Clarke can't get past is the stubborn set of her jaw. She doesn't know what Octavia is doing here, of all places, but then- she's never been to her and Lincoln's apartment, had never thought to ask where it was. It probably shouldn't surprise her that Octavia returned to her childhood neighborhood when she'd moved back to the city.

“Hey big brother,” Octavia's voice cracks a little on the last word, and her expression borders on tentative, something like hope and regret and pride all warring on her face. Bellamy's taut as a bow string, every muscle standing out in sharp relief. His fingers flex, and he doesn't look at her, doesn't say anything in response. Clarke knows he's worried if he gives a little, he'll give all the way. The longer they stay here, the more likely that is.

An awkward silence descends. It's clear Octavia wants to say something else to Bellamy, but doesn't want to say it in front of Clarke. But Clarke's not leaving unless Bellamy asks her to, and if the heavy way he's gripping her hand is any indication, he doesn't want her to.

“Well,” Clarke says, finally. “We should really get these groceries home, don't want the ice cream to melt.”

There is blatantly no ice cream in their cart, but Clarke meets Octavia's eyes and dares her to call her out on it. She doesn't. She looks cowed, younger than she normally does, her hard edges brittle and cracked. If she didn't know what had happened between the siblings, Clarke might even feel bad for her. They shuffle past her, awkwardly, Bellamy's eyes cast down, but just as they pass, Octavia puts her hand out to touch Clarke's arm.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” It sounds more like a demand than a request, a little of that Blake fire suddenly surfacing, and Bellamy has stopped dead next to her, but Clarke nudges him on.

“It's okay, I”ll catch up. You can start checking out.” He goes reluctantly, brow furrowed, casting glance back at them over his shoulder until he turns the corner of the aisle.

“Okay, say what you have to say, because we've got plans.” They don't, but Clarke doesn't feel bad about lying to Octavia. She'll do it every day if it protects Bellamy in some way. Octavia does not look pleased, and without Bellamy there, she's starting to puff up, shifting from something cracked to solid steel.

“None of this is your business, Clarke. Stay out of my relationship with my brother.”

“Sorry, but he's got a different opinion on it.”

Octavia's jaw is clenched so tight, Clarke feels like it should break teeth. And she's watching it all before her, the way Octavia can harden in an instant, her moods changing like the wind. Temperamental in the right word for her, the first one Bellamy had ever used to describe her to Clarke. “Just because you've spread your legs and have him following you around like a lost puppy now, doesn't mean he's going to pick you forever. When it comes down to it, I'm his sister, and you're just another temporary fling.” The way Octavia spits out the words, close lipped and eyes blazing, Clarke almost wonders which of them she's trying to convince, like if she says it sure enough, she'll make it true. Clarke takes a deep breath, trying to calm the urge to yell. She doesn't care what Octavia thinks about her, or her relationship with Bellamy, but she can't stand the way she talks about him, like he's something to own. And even so, standing here, with Octavia's ugly words ringing in her ears, she can't make herself believe that Octavia doesn't love him; she does, in her own twisted way, but just loving him isn't good enough, not when it comes with bloody knuckles and blame that suffocates him.

“I don't know if you'll believe this, because you seem to have a really warped sense of how relationships should work, but Bellamy didn't cut you out because of me. It's not some one or the other type deal that I forced him into. He cut you out because he was finally able to accept that he deserves better than how you treat him. And if you want him back in your life, then that's on you being willing to make a change. I _hope_ you figure out how to love him the way he deserves from you, because he loves you and he hates leaving you behind, but to be honest I doubt that will ever happen. And as long as it doesn't, he's better off without you.”

It feels so good to get all of that off her chest, all of the things she's _wanted_ to say to Octavia, but never thought she'd have the chance, certainly not without Bellamy listening. Clarke steps past Octavia and her cart, and this time Octavia doesn't try to stop her.

She catches up with Bellamy just before he finishes check out, and there's palpable relief in his eyes when she joins him.

“Are you okay? What happened?” He looks like he wants to reach out and touch her, cup her face in his hands, as if the bruise on her jaw from when Octavia had hit her weeks ago might have reappeared. She appreciates his concern, but also sees it for what it is, a deflection for dealing with his _own_ feelings about all this.

“I'm fine,” she assures him. “She's just not thrilled about us, thinks I'm why you're not speaking to her.”

“I can go say something,” he starts, but Clarke puts her hands on his chest to stop him. There's so much she wants to say, but they're in public, with a cashier waiting on them.

“You don't owe her an explanation, Bell. She knows what's she's done.” She leaves it at that, turning back the cashier before things can get way too uncomfortable the poor girl behind the register. They can talk about it back at home, if he wants.

They take an uber with their groceries back to Clarke's, and Bellamy makes sure Clarke is involved in putting the food away, as he explains the system he's set up in her kitchen. It's adorable that he's so concerned. Clarke fed herself just fine before him, or mostly fine, and she can certainly make it through three weeks without his help, but Bellamy's a caretaker at heart, so she lets him prattle on about shelf organization in her fridge until he's satisfied.

It's that night, lounging on the sofa drinking red wine, Clarke leaning back against Bellamy's chest, one of his arms banded around her, that she brings it up- late, but it's the atmosphere, warm, hazy, a her limbs loose from the wine, it feels like the right time.

“Hey, Bell?”

“Mhm?” They've put some home renovation show on the TV, and Bellamy is oddly fascinated by the construction work. Clarke mostly just likes the reveals, but Bellamy loves to watch the process.

“I... I guess I should have asked you sooner, but do you- would you like to come to Croatia with me?”

“What?” she can tell by the way he shifts behind her that he's taken his eyes off the tv, but she can't see his face at this angle, and she's glad. “I thought you were taking Raven,” he says.

“What made you think that?”

“Because you're leaving in a week and half. And after our fight- I just assumed. I mean, not that you were definitely going to ask me anyway, but-” She can almost hear him processing.

“I never asked her,” Clarke admits quietly. “I think I was just kind of hoping...” She doesn't finish the sentence, but she's pretty sure the meaning comes through, because his arm across her waist shifts slightly, and he presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“I'd love to go to Croatia,” he answers, gently, “but are you sure you don't want to take Raven? You don't have to take me just because we're together now.”

“I want it to be you,” Clarke tells him. She wants that more than anything. It's going to be an emotional trip for her, she's sure, with the ghost of her dad never far from her thoughts. She wants Bellamy's strength, his warmth, everything. There's no one she'd rather go with.

“Okay.” There's still the barest hint of hesitation in his voice, like he's not convinced. They fall silent for a few moments, and Clarke's worried he's going to change his mind, but when he speaks again, instead his voice has turned sure and infinitely warm, “I love you, you know?”

“I know.” But the truth is, she'd doubted it, been wondering if she'd ever get to hear that again from him, after everything they'd been through. It's so overwhelming that he's said it, out loud, in the real world, that there are tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She turns in his arms, twisting so that she can look at him, and the truth of his words is right there, written all over his face.

“I love you,” she says, her voice shaking with the emotion, the raw honesty.

He's looking straight into her eyes when he says it back.

* * *

 

Bellamy has another sex dream about her that night. When Clarke falls into it, everything is blurry and soft and a little disjointed feeling, but there's enough detail that she's able to make out that she's lying in a bed, full of plush pillows, and Bellamy's draped over her, trailing kisses down the side of her neck.

“Bell,” she starts, but he bites down, making her gasp, electricity shooting down her spine.

“Mhm?”

“Um,” Clarke fumbles for her thoughts, difficult to focus on in this hazy dream world where Bellamy's fingers are tracing lazily up her sides. “You're dreaming,” she chokes out.

“Mhm,” he murmurs, but other than that, he doesn't react, still singularly focused on that spot on her neck that makes her heart stop.

“Bell, did you hear me, you're-”

“Dreaming,” he finishes, the word pressed into her skin by his lips. “Got it. Don't care.” And well, she's fulfilled her moral obligation to inform him of the situation, so she allows herself to stop thinking and enjoy it.

Having sex in a dream is different from real life- everything's a little less clear. The sensations are there, his hands, his lips, the sting of teeth, but it's hard to pinpoint. Wasn't she just wearing clothes? It's like everything comes in and out of focus, the heat and love in his eyes, the way he hitches one of her legs over his hip, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips. It's real, but it's not; it's the intertwining of souls, rather than physical bodies, and she feels it, everything in every piece of her, not so much pleasure, as a mounting, wild, adoration.

There's no definite ending to it, no moment she can pinpoint where they went from rolling, tangled in the sheets, their bodies moving together, to lying next to each other, eyes turned toward the stars.

They're in that snowy valley again, Clarke realizes slowly, the one ringed with mountains, the universe spread out before them. The bed is positioned right in the middle of of it all, just as the blanket in the original dream had been. Everything is different now, so much has changed, but when she reaches out and links her pinky with his, she feels that moment running parallel to this one. She loved him then, she loves him more now. And above them, the stars are still infinite, full of possibilities.

 

The week and half leading up to their trip is a chaotic whirlwind. It really shouldn't have come as a surprise that Bellamy is already worried about everything that might go wrong, bad weather, flight delays, injury, illness, and his solution is consuming travel books and online blogs about Croatia at a rate that seems practically inhuman. Bellamy keeps spouting off history facts about the country and the Adriatic sea, and waving pictures of the Plitvice lakes at her. Clarke focuses on keeping up her physical therapy so that hopefully her leg won't bother her too much during the trip. She wants to be able to hike and swim and bike without any issues.

Their friends throw them a pre-trip party that's mostly just an excuse for all of them to come to Clarke's bearing large quantities of alcohol and get drunk. Wells is the only one who contributes actual food, in the form of three lasagnas, and two loaves of bread. The alcohol to food ratio isn't ideal (or perfectly ideal, depending on who you ask), but Clarke can't help but feel overly fond of the little band of misfits they've collected. She and Bellamy are only drinking sparingly, not wanting to be hungover for their flight in the morning.

“Too bad,” Clarke had teased him, “It would have been the perfect opportunity for kinky Bellamy to come out to play.”

“I'm saving that for Croatia,” he'd replied with a cheeky smile.

Late in the evening, when most everyone is piled on the sofa or sprawled on her carpet watching Wonder Woman, Clarke realizes Bellamy's slipped away. She extracts herself from between Raven and Monty, assuring them everything's fine as she does so, and goes looking for him.

She finds him sitting on the little back balcony off her bedroom, legs slotted between the bars of the railing and dangling over the street. He's brought his glass of wine with him but he isn't drinking it.

“Are you okay?” Clarke asks, concerned, as she takes a seat next to him, opting to lean her back against the railing, crosslegged, eyes straining to make out the details past the shape of him in the dim light that filters up from the street. She wonders if he's having second thoughts about the trip.

“I've just been thinking,” his voice is low, scratchy, “that when we get back, I need to talk to Lincoln.”

Clarke's heart skips a beat. “Yeah?”

“He deserves to know.” He seems to gain confidence in his words as he says them. “And he deserves to know before it happens to him.”

Clarke reaches for his hand. His skin is warm against hers, as always. “You're a really good person, Bellamy. I hope you know that.”

He lifts their intertwined hands to kiss the back of hers in response. She suspects it's the closest he can get to accepting her words.

“Now, come back inside, you're going to miss No Man's Land.”

The corners of Bellamy's lips lift. “Well, we can't miss No Man's Land.” He keeps a hold of her hand all the way back into the living room.

Everyone ends up passing out in various places in Clarke's apartment by just after 1 AM, so in the morning she and Bellamy are consequently trailed to the airport by five very enthusiastic friends to see them off. It's a long drive to the airport, entirely unnecessary for them all to make, but they squeeze into Clarke's car, which Wells will be returning to her apartment for her, anyway, insistent on seeing them off. Monty falls asleep on Miller's shoulder on the drive out. Harper's legs are swung over Raven's lap, and Wells is holding Raven's hand. They look like a family, _are_ a family, and Clarke hasn't felt this content in a long time.

Like complete assholes, their friends wave and cry out dramatic goodbyes as Bellamy and Clarke filter through security, despite Clarke's attempts to stop them, their friends laughing at the confusion of the other patrons. Bellamy hadn't been as bothered as Clarke, who is convinced they're all going to get thrown out or strip searched. Her cheeks are still burning with embarrassment by the time she sits down on one of the benches on the other side of the security to put her shoes back on. When she looks up, Bellamy's waiting for her, his backpack strapped across his back, Clarke's bag nestled safely between his feet. He holds out a hand to help her up, and she takes it, slinging her bag over one shoulder.

“You ready to go, Princess?” Bellamy asks, hand warm in hers.

“I think so,” she says, checking for her passport for the third time in twenty minutes.

“It's going to be an adventure,” he warns, eyes bright and full of love. It's a look she's seen on his face a thousand times, one she first encountered in his dreams. They've gone fantastical places, played magical roles, but this is different- solid and tangible and undeniably real. The first of what she hopes is many real life adventures to come.

Clarke smiles at him, this wonderful, complicated, special man that she loves. “With you it always is.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we have reached the eennndd, and I wasn't sure I'd make it. this has been a really unique fic experience for me, because it's one of my longest, and yet I've only shared it in 3 pieces (it's definitely the longest thing I've written that's only subdivided into 3 sections) and so the amount of time it's actually been out in the world has been so short, even though it took me four months to actually write. thank you all for reading, and thank you even more for commenting and letting me know what you've enjoyed about this fic. I feel a huge sense of relief that it's out there now, but I'm also going to miss it.
> 
> that being said, there _may_ be a short companion piece from Bellamy's POV in the works. I swear to God it's going to actually be short (that's what I said about this when I started writing it) and I'm not going to let it get out of control. I don't really have a time frame for you guys on that- I need a break badly, and with how things are in canon and where I am emotionally with it, I'm just not very inspired at the moment. that being said, I have the very beginning of the companion piece written. I'm a big believer in author's letting their works be finished when they need to be finished, which is why I can't (at least as of now) see myself really writing a _sequel_ to this piece, but a short companion piece seems doable, and like something fun and extra that you don't have to read if you're not interested. 
> 
>  
> 
> anyway, thank you guys so much, I love you all!


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